


Homestuck; Aftermath

by KalicoFox



Series: The Aftermath [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Bro is not actually a douch, Everybody is there, F/F, F/M, Gen, God Tier, Governments, Healing, Liberal interpretation of powers, M/M, Military, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Relationships REALLY take a backseat, Sburb/Sgrub Aftermath, Shapeshifting, Temporary Character Death, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalicoFox/pseuds/KalicoFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Sburb beaten, everything should go back to normal, right? All that's left now is to sit back and relax.<br/>Unfortunately, it seems as though the game has left you with more than a few souvenirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Welcome to Earth

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this will be continued or not, but I wrote it out in about a day after binging on Homestuck for three, so we'll see.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the game is beaten, new friends are found, and more stuff happens.

==>Rose; Wake Up

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you, along with seven other humans and six trolls, have just beaten the game Sburb.

You are exhausted.

Recently, you spent three years on a meteor; training and experimenting with the power boost and extra control that god tier granted you. Somehow, you ended up in a romantic relationship with the most beautiful troll you ever laid eyes on. You climbed the god tier achievement ladder like a monkey who'd drunk far too much coffee and perfected several fraymotif combos with your girlfriend.

The trolls had all achieved god tier as well, though whenever you asked how it was possible without quest beds, they would only mutter something about dream bubbles before changing the subject.

Even more recently, the fourteen of you managed to not only beat the shit out of three different versions of Jack Noir, (each with different power ups and abilities,) but you also, somehow, managed to get the drop on Her Imperious Condescension and kill her, as well as that unutterable _asshole_ Caliborn. You refuse to use his assumed name. It's too good for him.

The planetary grist caches have all been fed into Skaia. The universe tadpole is about to turn into a universe frog. There is a door in front of you, set in a stone replica of the oddly put together, stylized house that seems to be one of the logos for Sburb.

None of you are sure of what you're going to find on the other side of the door. All of you are rather reluctant to open it. None of you want to be separated.

You have all grown closer. You have all leaned on one another.

You are not sure what you would do if winning the game means no longer being able to see, or speak to, or touch any of your friends.

It is John who finally steels himself and reaches for the door. Taking the consequences upon himself, as usual. Giving everyone the opportunity to blame him if the outcome is undesirable.

Beside him, Karkat reaches for the door as well. Not as a challenge this time, not to try to upstage John, but as a support, silently telling him that he won't be blamed if it all goes wrong at the last second, or if you all can never see each other again.

Their hands meet, and close over the knob.

The door opens.

And you all fall into light.

\-----

Birdsong and the sound of running water wakes you, and you can't help but tense as you sit up.

This is it. The final test. If you are alone...

You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of that thought, and regret the action immediately as it begins to pound.

All around you, other voices begin to moan and groan.

Your heart lifts, and you stand quickly, looking around and steadfastly ignoring the jackhammer in your brain.

You are Rose Lalonde, and you are standing in the front yard of the house you grew up in. The sun is bright and warm overhead, and the breeze is cool as it rustles through the trees.

Your friends are spread out on the grass around you, and you don't think you have ever been happier.

 

 

==> Be the friendleader

 

You are now John Egbert, and someone nearby is laughing. That's nice. It's been a while since anyone really had a reason to laugh, but the edge of hysteria in her voice is making you worry, so you shove the blinding headache to the back of your awareness, and sit up.

You regret it almost instantly, as your stomach makes an immediate bid to become acquainted with the ground. You reject the bid through sheer force of will and take a few deep breaths before looking around.

There are a lot more people than you were expecting, all laying around in the yard of a house you'd only seen once in person.

But, you pause, then look around a little more frantically, where are the trolls? Where are Karkat and Terezi and Gamzee and Vriska?

And who the hell are all these extra people? Did you land on them when you stepped through the door? Do they live here?

"Roll call." You croak, "Everybody sound off."

Your voice is a harsh rasp, and you aren't sure everyone heard you, but the closest ball of groaning misery uncurls enough to reply.

"Jane Crocker. Alive."

One by one, each person calls their name and their status, and you're hard pressed not to pass out from shock when several of the humans call out familiar names in familiar voices. Familiar troll names.

It isn't until someone a bit further out calls, "Cronus Ampora. Wvishing I wvas dead again." That anyone else responds.

Karkat, still short, but pale skinned rather than grey, with messy _red_ hair, rather than black, bolts to his feet, wobbles, then catches his balance and glares around.

"Who the fuck just said that?!?" He demands, his hands clenching into fists.

Somehow that draws his attention down to his own hands, and you sit back to enjoy the show.

After all, a genuine Karkat tantrum is something to be savored.

Rose catches your eye, and you grin at her.

"WHAT THE BULGESNIFFING FUCK!?" Karkat's shriek is enough to make you feel like your ears are bleeding, but you stifle a snicker anyway as someone else levers themself up into a sitting position.

"Karkat, what the fuck are you yelling abou-" They're cut off as they catch sight of Karkat's shaking form.

There's a flash of movement, (is that Dave? He doesn't look quite right, but Dirk is over there...) and suddenly Karkat is being inspected closely.

The inspection startles Karkat enough that he stops yelling, and that oddity is enough to get everyone who knows him to start sitting up and taking notice of whatever's going on.

Suddenly, there's a lot more noise as each of the trolls realizes that they've been turned into a human.

This isn't good. You can't deal with a huge, panicked mob. They need to calm down.

"ENOUGH!" You let the wind carry your shout across the yard, making it louder until it booms like thunder. You take a breath to say something else, anything else, but Rose interrupts.

"There is no need to panic." She says, smoothly lifting herself into the air, "I believe this is a prize for winning the game. Look."

And, so quickly, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it transition later, Rose is a troll.

Grey skin, short black hair held back with a headband, longish candy corn looking horns that arch just slightly backwards. Yup. Rose just turned into a troll.

What the _fuck_?!

Smoothly, she transitions back into her human self and continues. "As I said, I believe this is a prize, to allow those who would not be able to blend in to do so, and to allow for greater genetic diversity, should we wish to create a troll population on Earth."

You heave a sigh of relief as the tension drains out of the nearest human-shaped troll. Thank gog for Seers.

There's a quiet ripple through the crowd as the human-shaped trolls return to their troll form. Now it's easy for you to see that the trolls outnumber the humans in the crowd.

"Where did all the extra trolls come from?" You murmur quietly to yourself, frowning slightly.

"Most of them are the Alphas." A rough voice says from your left, and you glance over to see that Karkat has joined you, looking much more comfortable as a troll again, even as he squints against the sunlight. "But it looks like everyone who died is back too."

You frown. You'd heard about who died, and why, from Rose when you'd finally met back up.

"Is that going to be a problem?" You ask, and Karkat shakes his head.

"I don't think so. Apparently time is weird in dream bubbles, so any issues they had, they should have gotten over a long time ago."

You nod. "That's good. I'd really like to not have to fight for my life again anytime soon."

Karkat gives you a strange look out of the corner of his eye, but you're distracted by Dave, or rather, who you thought was Dave, extending a pair of absolutely enormous red-gold wings.

"What the hell!?"

Your exclamation must have been louder than you thought, because the Dave with wings turns his head toward you and smirks.

"Surprise, Egbert." He drawls, and hammers the wings down, leaping with the downstroke so that he shoots into the sky like a cork from a wine bottle.

A streak of red taking off from nearby tells you that the Knight of Time has gone to join his ex-sprite in the air, and you roll your eyes as the faint ringing of metal on metal reaches your ears.

You turn towards Rose, who is still floating five feet off the ground, her eyes on her ecto-siblings and a faint smile hovering around her lips.

"Rose," you tug lightly on her ankle to get her attention, and smile crookedly up at her. "We need to know who's here. Would you mind making a list? We need to know who's hostile to who, and who can stand who, as well."

"Who is hostile to whom," Rose corrects you, but pulls a pad of paper and a pencil out of her sylladex and starts to float off.

You call a thank you after her, and get an absent wave back, before heaving a sigh and turning back to Karkat.

"Anything I'm missing?" You ask, and Karkat scoffs.

"A fucking brain in your thinkpan?" He suggests, and you grin.

"Aww, come on. I'm not doing too bad!"

Karkat snarls at you, and your grin widens.

"John?"

You freeze at the deep, familiar voice from behind you, then, slowly, force yourself to turn around.

There, standing behind you with four other adults, is your dad. The familiar fedora carefully placed on his head, the pipe in one hand.

"Dad." Your voice cracks, but you can't bring yourself to be embarrassed as you literally fly at him and wrap him in your arms.

He hugs you back, tight, and you barely even notice the tears streaming down your face. You can't say anything but 'you're back, I missed you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' over and over again as he rubs your back.

Eventually, you manage to peel yourself off of him, scrubbing furiously at your eyes under your glasses and grinning sheepishly at him.

You've grown, you realize with a start. You can almost look your dad straight in the eye now, and it's _weird_. You can see the same realization in the rueful twist of his lips, even as he slings an arm over your shoulder and draws you back to his side.

You melt against him with a happy sigh, then catch Karkat's eye and blush horribly before averting your eyes to gaze absently out at the small crowd. You'll have to figure out somewhere for everyone to sleep, if Rose is all right with everyone staying here for the time being.

"JOHN!"

The sound of your name dopplers after the streak of red falling out of the sky, a golden form blurring after it, and you tense, pulling away from your father and getting ready to catch Dave's falling form.

Dave, however, pulls up at the last second, just above head level, and blasts his way towards you, the no-longer-sprite-Dave following on his heels.

The two of them touch down lightly in front of you, stiffening slightly as they catch sight of the adults behind you, then forcing themselves to ignore them.

"We've got trouble comin’ in fast." Red Dave reports.

"It looks like half the goddamn army is coming up the road this way. I don't know what the fuck they want, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they're planning to shoot first, ask questions later." Orange Dave continues, and you groan softly, shoving your glasses out of the way so you can pinch the bridge of your nose.

"Fuck."

Red Dave smirks. "I hear ya. Even better, I'm pretty sure they've got air support comin’ in, unless Rose lives directly under a regular flight path."

"This really ain't lookin' friendly." Orange Dave puts in, and you scowl ferociously.

"What the hell is going on?" You demand, then shake your head. "No. Never mind. You're sure they're coming here? And that they’re coming for us?"

Red Dave shrugs, "As sure as we can be without goin' over to get our asses shot off."

Orange Dave agrees with him, “This is the only road around, as far as I could see. And I could see pretty damn far.”

You wince, but nod. "All right..."

"We need to leave."

You barely manage to suppress a yelp, even as you spin in place to glare at Terezi, who grins toothily at you.

"'Rezi, what's going on?" You ask, and the blind troll shrugs.

"I'm not sure. Timelines say, if we stay, most of us end up on exam tables, and the rest of us are brainwashed, blackmailed, or outright dead. We need to get the fuck out of here, right now."

"Fuuuuuck." You groan, slumping slightly. "I fucking jinxed us. Fuck."

You let yourself have a two second pity party, then straighten up, and lift into the air, looking for a familiar black hood and white dog ears.

"Jaaaade!" You shout, and almost fall out of the air at the chirped, "Yes?" from behind you.

"Sweet baby troll jegus!" you yelp, massaging your chest above your pounding heart.

"Jade, can you still teleport? We need to all get out of here as soon as possible. The Daves said we've got what looks like half the US army coming up Rose's driveway, and Terezi said that things don't look good for us if we're here when they arrive."

Jade frowns for a moment, then brightens. "Sure! We can go to my island! It's remote enough that I don't think anyone will bother us there!"

You sag slightly with relief. "Good, that's great. Can you start teleporting everyone in a few minutes?"

"Yup yup!"

"Great."

You climb a little higher in the air, then clear your throat.

"Excuse me!" You call, "Can I have your attention please?"

A few people stop chatting, or wandering around and look at you, and you groan. You don't fucking have time for this...

"HEY FUCKWITS!" Karkat's voice booms from next to you, and you whirl around, your eyes wide as you look at your co-friendleader. "PAY SOME FUCKING ATTENTION, OR WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE. AGAIN."

Everyone shuts up and turns toward the two of you, and you grin your thanks at Karkat, who simply makes a get-on-with-it gesture with his hands.

"Right." You say, "We've got a fairly large military force coming up the road right now. They'll be here in..." you glance at the Daves.

"Thirteen minutes and twenty seconds. The planes in less than five minutes." Red Dave supplies, and you nod.

"About thirteen minutes. They've got air support, lots of guns, and lots of manpower. We need to get the hell out of dodge, so Jade's going to be teleporting us all to her island."

"Wait, we're just going to run away?" Someone demands, and you groan silently.

"At the moment, we have no clue why the hell they want us, or how the fuck they even know about us. We're at a fucking disadvantage, so yes, we're going to make a tactical retreat." Orange Dave calls back, "There's no point fighting an enemy when you're at the fucking disadvantage, so we're gonna to go make sure we can at least level the playing field."

"And then we'll come back and stomp these nooklickers into the ground!" Vriska's voice was raised in a joyous, bloodthirsty snarl, and you groan softly to yourself, even as the rest of the trolls seem to calm down.

You turn back to Jade, who's watching you with worried green eyes.

"You're going to do something stupid, aren't you." She asks, and you shrug.

"Probably? We need to know why they're here, but I don't want to risk anyone. I want you to leave me here when you take everyone. I'll wait here and see if I can talk to them. Find out what it is they want. It'll be fine!" You add quickly, "I don’t _think_ they’ll attack an unarmed kid. I’ll be careful, I promise."

Jade scowls, but nods. "Fine. But I'm coming back as soon as I'm done. You need someone to watch your back mister, just in case!"

You give Jade a crooked smile and a swift hug, then allow yourself to fall back down to the ground facing the two Daves.

"Are you two going to be okay?" You ask, your eyes narrowed slightly.

The Daves glance at each other, then turn back to you.

"We're cool." Orange Dave says.

"Icy." Red Dave agrees, and you decide to take their word for it.

As you turn to go, a hand catches your shoulder, and you spin in place, the Pop-a-matic Vrillyhoo Hammer materializing in your hand as you spin.

The hand lets go, and you see your father standing in front of you, his hands raised to show his unarmed state, a strange look in his eyes.

"Oh jeez!" You gasp, and let the hammer slide back into your strife specibus, "Sorry Dad. What's up?"

"Well, I was going to ask if you were sure about staying behind," He says, chuckling awkwardly, "but I can see that you can handle yourself, so I'll just say be careful!"

He wraps you in a firm hug, and you hug him back, hard, before letting go and stepping back.

"All right everyone!" Jade shouts gleefully, "Here we go!"

There's a staticky sort of buzz, and everyone but you vanishes in a blaze of green light.

 

 

==> Be the younger Mother/Daughter

 

You are now Roxy Lalonde, and you have never seen so much living greenery in your entire life.

Well, you had seen it before on Jake's planet, and a bit on Jane's, but here, on Earth? Not so much. There are plants everywhere. There are trees!

It is very hard for you not to start squealing and rolling around on the grass like an idiot.

"Rose?" A familiar voice says from behind you, and you turn, look (slightly) up into an eerily familiar face, and gape.

There, standing tall and beautiful in a white labcoat and a pink scarf is you.

"Holy carp!" You squeak, and sit down hard.

"You... are not my Rosie." The other you says, and you shake your head.

"I'm her motherdaughter." You say. "I mean, I consider her my mother, 'cause I was made with her genetic material, and I was born way, way after her, and I lived in her house, but she was raised by you, and omigod you're me!" You squeak again on the last word, then blush as one elegant eyebrow lifts and the other you joins you on the ground, folding her legs carefully under her so that she can sit comfortably.

"I think I need more information than that." she says, and you nod and start trying to explain.

As you talk, her eyebrows get higher and higher, and a little furrow forms between her eyebrows. When you finish, she raises a hand to her temple and massages it lightly.

"I really need a drink." She murmurs, and you nod sympathetically.

"I know." You agree. "It's waaaay easier to understand when I'm drunk, but I kinda like being sober now, and I wanted Rose-mom to be proud of me, so I quit drinking. Plus, Janey might yell at me again if I fall off the wagon..." You glance around, and, seeing Jane no-where in sight, pull a small flask out of your sylladex.

"Here. I was saving it for an emergency. Like if I got stuck in a doomed timeline or somethin'? I really didn't think I'd wanna be sober in that case, and it wouldn't matter anyway, 'cause I'd end up dead in the end."

Troubled pink eyes flick from you, to the flask, then back.

"When did you start drinking?" She asked, making no move to take the flask from you.

You shrug, and put the flask on the ground in between the two of you.

"I dunno. I think I was six? Or maybe seven. Somethin' like that. I was bored, and lonely, and the movies I would watch would show the lonely or sad people drinkin' and it looked like they'd feel better, and the house was fulla booze, so I just..." you shrug.

"And it did make me feel better, a little, like I didn't really have as many problems, or like I wasn't alone, 'cause I could be silly or whatever and entertain myself. So I just... didn't stop?" You shrug again, slightly uncomfortably this time. "I met Jane and Jake and Dirk online a year or three later, an' it was kinda better, but they also kinda made me realize how really alone I was, so I drank more. It all kinda came to a head when we went in the game, and I quit. Jane and Dirk helped a loooot."

The other you looks contemplatively at the flask, then nudges it back towards you.

"I think I'll pass." She says, and smiles, "After all, if I can't follow my own example, then whose can I?"

You grin back, delighted, and swoop the flask back up into your sylladex.

 

 

 

==> Be a concerned older brother

 

You are now Bro Strider, and you have fucked everything up.

Well. Not everything. Just everything that actually matters. Like Dave.

Mostly Dave.

Screw it. You fucked up your kid.

And you aren't even sure why.

For thirteen years, all you knew was that you had to push the kid. Make him stronger. Make him faster. Prepare him. You were driven to train him endlessly, and you did.

Or you thought you did.

Looking back at it now, all you can see is an endless string of beatings that were, in no way, actually training.

Anything the kid learned, he learned in spite of you, not because of you, and you are horrified.

You saw him fight, or at least, you saw a version of him fight, there on the blue-black planet, against that winged bug thing.

He was fantastic. You wanted more than anything to tell him how proud you were of him. How much he'd grown.

But nothing came out of your mouth, and suddenly the bug guy was a dog guy, and way stronger than, and you _couldn't move fast enough_ \- _Dave get out of there!_

And the Dave you'd been fighting alongside lost a wing, and you were blind with terror and rage and suddenly you were on the ground, and there was laughter in the background, _cackling in your head_ and _PAIN_. And then nothing.

And now here you are, in a crowd of people. Most of them look like monsters, but they're ignoring you, and you're not going to start shit until you know what the fuck's going on, but you've caught glimpses of white blond hair, and red-gold wings, and saw a fully human Dave flying somehow, and...

And your mind is clear. There's no laughter. There's nothing keeping you from speaking. You could go, and hug the kid as tight as you can, and you want to, god do you want to, but...

But you fucked up. Dave should have been taken from you. There's no way you should have been left with a goddamn kid; not if that was how you were raising him. So why? Why was he left with you?

Was it because you patched him up, rather than taking him to the hospital whenever he needed stitches after a 'training' session?

That thought makes you want to hurl. Your kid. Your little brother, who looked up to you, and idolized you, and loved you. You hurt him so bad he needed stitches on a regular basis.

Something else drifts to the forefront of your mind, and you blanch even further. Puppet porn? You filmed and produced puppet porn in front of him?

_What the fuck?!?_

You mean, sure, puppets are awesome. But why the fuck would you think producing puppet porn in front of a child was ever okay?!

You feel dizzy as more and more evidence of your unfitness to raise a child, to even _look_ at a child is shoved into your brain, and you stumble away from the group, clutching your stomach.

'Sparring' with live weapons. Days with no food. No physical contact. No doctor visits. No praise. Stitches with no anesthetic. Show no emotions. Call everything 'ironic' to hide attachment.

You are a horrible human being.

You lean against a tree and empty your stomach onto the ground.

You have to get away. You have to keep away from your brother. Away from _your kid_.

You can't let yourself fuck him up even more. Not ever again.

You skirt the puddle of vomit, and stumble further into the forest.

You have to stay away from Dave.

"Hey, where are you going?" A voice, raspy, with a faint sweetness underneath. You ignore it.

"Hey wait! Jade said to stay here until she gets back with John!"

You can't. You can't let yourself be around Dave. You have to protect him.

"Aradia? What'th going on?"

"This guy. I think he's in shock or something? He's not listening to me!"

"Hmm..."

There's a tingling in the back of your head, then someone gasps hoarsely, and the sound of vomiting fills the air.

"Get Vrithka. _Now_." The second voice orders, then coughs and spits as the sound of footsteps rapidly fades away.

Good. Less people to try to get around.

You take a few more steps into the forest, and crackling bands of energy wrap around you, lifting you into the air.

What the fuck?

You start struggling, hard, but no matter what you do, you can't put so much a toe on the ground or a nearby tree or anywhere that would get you the traction you need to flash step away.

The fluttering of wings makes you struggle harder. Dave is coming. You can't be around Dave. You have to keep him safe from you.

" _Put him to thleep right now!_ " The lisping voice howls, and you fade instantly into darkness.

 

 

==> Be confused.

 

There's a lot of that going around. Care to be more specific?

 

 

==> Be the confused Thief.

 

You are Vriska Serket, and you are _most definitely_ confused.

"What the grubsniffing hell am I looking at?" You demand, staring at the unconcious human held up in Sollux's psionic grasp.

"It'th Dave'th hatchmate." Sollux explains, turning to go rejoin the larger group. "Thomething wath wrong. I could hear hith voithe in my head, thcreaming."

You scoff. "What, he was going to go kill himself? Good riddance to weaklings."

Sollux shakes his head, "I don't think that'th it. Jutht peeking into hith head made me thick. There'th thomething really wrong."

You roll your eyes, but follow Sollux back into the clearing Jade had dumped you all in. The limp, floating form following the two of you drew some eyes, but the expression on Sollux's face seemed to make people reconsider asking questions.

"I need Rothe." Sollux says quietly, and you roll your eyes again, but take off in a flutter of wings and glitter, searching for the familiar tunic and hood that is a nearly perfect match of your own.

You find Rose at the edge of the crowd, watching a woman sitting on the ground with the Roxy human.

"Rose." You say, jolting her out of her observation. "Sollux wants you. He thinks there's something wrong with Dave's hatchmate."

Rose frowns, turning to look at you. "What do you mean, 'wrong'?"

You shrug carelessly. "The fuck should I know? Apparently I'm just here to take messages and put people to sleep."

Rose rolls her eyes at you, but lifts off, hovering just above everyone else's head height and you turn to lead her back to where you left Sollux.

The human, Bro, or whatever his name is, has been laid out on a patch of grass, and Sollux is glancing around worriedly. He starts beckoning you on as soon as he sees you, and you sigh, roll your eyes, and dart towards him, Rose right on your heels.

"What's the hurry?" You ask, impatient, "He's out. He's not going anywhere. Jegus, calm your fucking bulge Sollux."

"That'th the problem." Sollux says grimly, "I think he'th getting worth."

Rose moves up to stand next to you, staring down at the prone male.

"What's wrong?" She asks, "What's getting worse?"

"There'th thomething in hith head." Sollux says, "Thomething that gave him thcarth in hith mind. It theemth like it'th mothtly gone, but therth little bitth left that are trying to do _thomething_ but I can't tell what!"

The frustration in his voice is clear, and Rose frowns, and kneels, pulling out her Thorns.

"Let's take a look then."

 

 

==> Be Rose

 

You are Rose Lalonde, and you are looking into a mind in a way you had never before considered doing.

You are completely horrified by what you see.

Tendrils of sticky red energy are everywhere, bisecting memories, completely obstructing entire chunks of personality, and in some areas, _twisting_ in such a way that should Dave's brother be inclined to behave in one way, he would instead act in a manner completely the opposite.

And even though the energy is everywhere, in little red threads, there are even more areas where there are only impressions; grey or black lines, like scars on the mindscape that showed where even more threads used to be.

The source. You have to find the source. It won't matter if you killdestroy _burn out all of this sickening filth_ unless you get the roots. Jade has taught you this. When you are weeding, it is important to kill the roots. But you can't find it. You aren't familiar enough with the structure of a mind, all you can do is See.

"Get me every single Mind player here." You hear yourself snap at Vriska, distantly, "The Life players too. Anyone who can heal at all."

There's nothing but startled silence from the other Light player, then a faint flutter of wings as she leaves.

You'll have to apologize later, but right now all you want to do is sink into grimdarkness and _destroy everything_.

A warm hand clasps your shoulder, and you lean into it, but don't otherwise acknowledge it, focusing with everything you have on trying to find the root, the source of this malaise.

You feel first one mind, then several more join you; the Mind players, worried about what's got you so upset.

Distantly, you can hear retching, but you ignore it. It’s not important now.

More minds join, linked in by Terezi and her abilities as the Seer of Mind. They won't be able to help untangle anything, but they might be able to keep the infected parts alive while the infection is burnt out.

You follow the Mind players as they find the largest intrusion and follow it down into the depth of his memory, all the way to-

You wrench yourself out of the web, throwing yourself out of the circle that's congregated around Dave's brother, and knocking the human Dave off his feet.

You are furious. You are absolutely _incandescent with sheer rage._ You want to destroy everything, and the Thorns in your hands are humming with pent up majykal power. You raise your hands, barely noticing the scenery blur before slashing down your wands and blowing a huge chunk out of the landscape.

 

==> Be the worried Furry.

 

You are Jade Harley. You have just teleported yourself and your friendleader to the island you grew up on, and almost immediately had to stop one of your best friends from blowing up the clearing containing everyone who played the game.

You have _no idea_ what's going on.

There are seven people grouped around the top half of an eighth person while the two Daves lean against a tree nearby. It looks like they aren't worried, but their shoulders are tense, and you can almost hear their teeth grinding from here.

"What's going on?" John asks quietly from beside you, and you shrug.

"I have got absolutely no clue." You say honestly, "None of them. At all."

John sighs, and scrubs his face down his hand. "All right. You figure that out. I have to go talk to my dad and Karkat about this enormous cockup we just got dropped into."

You nod, and he strides off, snagging Roxy from a conversation with one of the Alpha trolls with a quick apology even as he drags her off.

You frown, but turn to look at the scene that first caught your eye.

You can't tell what's going on from a distance, so you sidle closer and start picking up snatches of conversation.

Except, that's all the conversation there is. Snatches. As though they're talking to each other on two separate levels, and can't quite keep it to just one.

It's all completely useless to you, though, and trying to piece the sentence fragments together just confuses you, so you turn your attention to the Daves instead.

You really should figure out a way to differentiate between your friend and your ex-boyfriend when you speak, actually. After all, it would be bad to have Friend Dave think you're being mean to him, when you're really talking about ex-boyfriend Dave.

Although... maybe you should let it go already? It has been a while, and he did have _somewhat_ legitimate worries.

Kinda.

In a way.

Ish.

Anyway!

"So what's going on? Who is that?" You ask, glancing between God-Tier Dave and ex?-Sprite Dave and the eerily similar guy on the ground.

"Dunno what's going on," God-Tier Dave says casually, "No one's said yet. They just keep spouting gibberish like it's goin' out of fuckin' style."

"That's Bro, though." Ex?-Sprite Dave puts in, and God-Tier Dave huffs a bitter laugh.

"Be fuckin' ironic as hell if he managed to come back from bein’ dead in the game, only to drop dead in real life within twenty-four fuckin' hours."

Your jaw drops slightly, then your eyes narrow. "Now you listen here, mister! What is even with that defeatist attitude? Where did that come from? Your bro is going to be fine! He's going to wake up! And he'll be so happy to see you! Probably a little confused, too, because now there's twice as much Dave as there used to be, BUT that just means twice as much awesome! So! No more silly talk out of you, okay?"

The Daves sigh in unison, then jerk to attention as, one by one, the players around his bro start to relax, dropping out of whatever mind meld thingy they've got going on.

"So what's the sitch, Spider-bitch?" God-Tier Dave asks, his hand crammed into the front pocket of his godly pjs.

Vriska mock snarls at him, but she looks tired. "Your hatchmate has been royally fucked up by the green asshole himself." she says bluntly. "I couldn't do anything but watch, and I don't understand a lot of what I saw, but what I could understand is so unbelievably fucked up I'm amazed he didn't fucking kill himself as soon as he fucking could."

Both Daves tense even further, and God-Tier Dave opens his mouth to say something, only to be cut off by a chime, followed by John's voice speaking quietly out of thin air next to your ear.

_"We need to have a meeting, right now. Everyone with access to a computer of some kind, get there. Now. I'm opening a memo, because we need to have a record of this absolutely fucktastic goddamn mess."_

Vriska winces slightly, glances at the Daves, then sighs and speaks in the odd, double-tone that indicates the use of the ‘Gift of Gab’.

"Dave's bro has to stay asleep, and if you think your news is a clusterfuck, then we've got a whole new definition of clusterfuck going on over here. Everyone needs to know generally what's going on with this, too, so I'll bring it up on the memo."

 _"Fine."_ John agrees, and sounds so tired you almost yawn yourself. _"Jade, you might want to see about getting Rose back on this planet."_

"Right!" You chirp, and glide over to where you left LOCAH, miniaturized still, floating in the shade.

The poor planet definitely has some new craters, but you can't see any more ongoing destruction, so you teleport yourself down to where you think Rose might be.


	2. Chapter 2

CEB RIGHT NOW opened memo on board FRUITY RUMPUS ASSHOLE FACTORY.

CURRENT autonomousOrator [CAO] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CAO: 6ef9re we 6egin, I w9uld just like t9 ask if there are any p9tentially triggering su6jects that any9ne sh9uld 6e aware 9f?

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CCG: OH MY GOG, KANKRI, DO YOU EVER SHUT UP?

CCG banned CAO from responding to memo.

FUTURE autonomousOrator [FAO] 2 HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.

[FAO] That was unnecessary. I was merely trying to 6e sensitive t9 the needs 9f 9thers in regards t9 their p9tential triggers or 9ther p9ssi6ly pr96lematic subjects. It is necessary when dealing with a y9unger, m9re v9latile species that certain su6jects remain ta699 s9 as n9t t9 trigger a p9ssi6le psych9tic 6reak.

CURRENT timaeusTestified [CTT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CTT: Hey, fuck you too, dude.

CCG: SERIOUSLY KANKRI, FUCK OFF. NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR HOOFBEASTSHIT.

CCG banned FAO from responding to memo.

CCG: AND JUST TO BE SURE.

CCG banned PAO from responding to memo.

CEB: can i start the actual memo now?

CCG: FEEL FREE.

CEB: thanks…

CEB: all right! now that that’s over with, listen up everyone! you probably noticed that i stayed behind to try to figure out what was going on. well, here’s what’s going on- apparently the whole world knows about our sessions. and not just this last one. all of them. pre and post scratch. it doesn’t seem to matter.

CCG: HOOFBEASTSHIT. I'M CALLING HOOFBEASTSHIT RIGHT NOW. THERE IS NO WAY. 

CURRENT adiosToreador [CAT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CAT: hOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? i UH, THOUGHT THAT WHAT HAPPENED IN A, UM, SESSION, STAYED IN THAT SESSION. bESIDES, ISN'T THIS THE UH, UNIVERSE, OR WORLD, OR WHATEVER THAT WE JUST MADE?

CEB: that's not the bad news. the bad news is, apparently people think that we humans have somehow been brainwashed or something? by the trolls, i mean. the guy i was talking to; he kept saying stuff like 'we'll get you and your friends some help.' or 'don't worry kid, you'll be safe with us.'

CEB: it was really freaky. i got the feeling that he really didn’t like you guys for some reason…

CURRENT tipsyGnostalgic [CTG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CTG: i'm srufing the interwebs right now and its liek somebody wass following us around wit cameras or something.

CTG: *surfing

CTG: *like

CTG: it looks like somone put it all together in epidose on a special webstie. its wierd tho. like most people dont think the footage is reakl. alot of the comments are complaining about the lateast episodes, or about how compltcated the plot ks.

CTG: *episode

CTG: *wesbite

CTG: **webist

CTG: fuck.

CEB: that's weird. that shouldn't be happening.

CCG: YES EGBERT. WE GET IT. IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. LET'S JUST DWELL ON THAT RATHER THAN ASKING THE ACTUALLY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. LIKE, OH, HOW THE BLISTERING FUCK DID THEY KNOW WHERE TO FIND US?

CTG: i'm watching the last bit now incase it has cluuues :3

CTG: so brb i guess

CURRENT twinArmageddons [CTA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CTA: IIf 2omeone wiith grii2t wiill alchemiize me a decent fuckiing computer, iim 2ure iill be able two at lea2t fiind the 2ource of the 2tream.

CAT: i UH, HAVE GRIST, nOT A LOT, BUT UM, IT SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE JUST A UM, HUSKTOP OR SOMETHING, dO THE UH, ALCHEMITERS EVEN STILL WORK?

CTA: ii 2aid a decent computer, not a fuckiing hu2ktop! iive been 2tuck wiith the2e piiece2 of 2hiit for way two long; iif iim going two do anythiing u2efull ii need a real computer. 

CCG: JEGUS FUCKING CHRIST WILL YOU TWO GET A ROOM!? AND BY GET A ROOM, I MEAN STOP FUCKING FLIRTING UNTIL WE’VE FIGURED OUT WHAT SORT OF TAINTCHAFING CLUSTERFUCK WE’VE LANDED IN THIS TIME!

CAT: nO, IT’S NOT LIKE UM, THAT, i WAS JUST,,,

CCG: I DON’T CARE.

CTA: KK, 2hut the fuck up!

CEB banned CCG from responding to memo.

CEB banned CAT from responding to memo.

CEB banned CTA from responding to memo.

CEB: sorry about that guys, but you were getting really off topic. anyway, was there anything else before i close the memo so we can start trying to figure this stuff out?

CURRENT tentacleTherapist [CTT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CTT: Sollux, Vriska and I were alerted to a problem earlier regarding Dave’s brother. Aradia found him attempting to leave, although it did not seem as though he knew where he was trying to go. When he proved unresponsive to verbal questioning, Sollux attempted to make mental contact. What Sollux found was disturbing enough that he immediately restrained Bro and asked that Vriska put him to sleep.

CTT: They requested my assistance with determining the cause of Bro’s mental disturbance, which I granted. Almost immediately upon looking into his mind, I found evidence of a great deal of mental tampering, much of which was scarred over. As I am neither a mind player or a life player, and as such have no true intuition when it comes to mental structure or healing, I requested additional aid and relegated myself to the position of providing the needed power to those better suited to help.

CURRENT arachnidsGrip [CAG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CAG: Get to the point already, Lalonde!

CTT: To cut out a great deal of detail, then; there is evidence that Bro had been under the indirect influence, or possibly at least partially possessed by Caliborn for an extended period of time. His death seems to have gotten rid of much of the invasive influence, but his subsequent return to life also brought back some of the mental ‘taint’ if you will, which was attempting to reassert itself over his mind.

CURRENT turntechGodhead [CTG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CTG: what the fuck. no. wait. what the FUCK!? that green shitstain was in bros head? hang on. i gotta go beat the shit out of a dead motherfucker.

CTT: Calm down, Dave. The mind and life players were attempting to remove the influence, while healing the residual scarring. I do not know how successful they were, since I became rather… overwrought when I recognized the culprit.

CTG: how did that fucker even get in bros head? he never even met bro, unless theres some more time travel gonna happen that hasnt happened yet.

CTT: I believe you are already aware of the cause on some level, but for the sake of brevity I will spell it out for you. Lil’ Cal. At some point, the ventriloquist dummy was used to house Caliborn’s soul, thus becoming a cursed ‘juju’. As we saw with one of the Jacks, cursed jujus can possess people, or act as a conduit for mind control. You have mentioned in the past that Lil’ Cal was Bro’s favorite puppet. This may well be why.

CTG: oh.

CTG: fucking christ

[CTG] has stopped responding to memo.

CURRENT gutsyGumshoe [CGG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CGG: Hoo hoo! It went fine, by the way! :)

CGG: We’ll probably have to do a couple more checks later, just to make sure we got everything, but I don’t think we’ll need EVERY mind and life player for those!

CTT: The point I was trying to make, however, was that all of us have spent some time in Caliborn’s sphere of influence in one way or another. It would behoove us all to be examined mentally. There is no way to tell what sort of traps could lie in wait for an opportune moment.

CURRENT gallowsCalibrator [CGC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.

CGC: TH4T 1S 4N 3XC3LL3NT PL4N!! >: ]

CGC: 1 W1LL M4K3 SUR3 TH4T NO ON3 3SC4P3S TH3 SC4NN1NG OF TH3 TH1NKP4N!!!

CGC: H3H3H3H3H3 >: ]

CEB: riiiiiiiight… does any one else have input? thoughts on brain scanning, or what ever the fuck is going on with the sessions being filmed, or anything else?

CEB: nothing? awesome.

CEB: and on that note, i think im going to close this memo out. that’s pretty much everything that needs to be known now, anyway.

CEB closed memo.

\-------

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and today has been one long adventure into a whole new land of fucked up.

Your sprite, prototyped by a future version of you from a doomed timeline, has been returned to (arguable) humanity, and is currently... somewhere. You don't care where. You're his clone/twin, not his gogdamn babysitter.

You have recently received VERY DISTURBING news from a friend, in a public forum, and you would very much like to freak the fuck out now.

What will you do?

==> Flip your shit and cry like a little bitch.

What? No. You are too cool to flip your shit. You are definitely too cool to cry. Like a little bitch or otherwise.

You may be freaking out a little. Internally. Where no one can see.

Instead, you walk over to where your bro has been left to lay, sleeping, on the ground, ignoring the troll (who looks disturbingly like Vriska; is she one of those 'dancestors'?) who was left to keep an eye on him.

You settle on the ground next to a tree, giving yourself something to lean back against. You know you’re fast enough to get Bro out of here if shit starts to go down, but you aren't sure you _want_ to.

You take a deep breath, then release it. You're fine. You're chill. You're the embodiment of a fucking bigass glacier.

When you'd met Dirk, your bro's analogue, everything you'd thought about and realized over your three year stay on the meteor had come pouring out. It had hurt, but at the same time, it felt... nice, in a way. Like cleaning out an infected wound, and having it start to really heal. This though? This new information? It was like someone had suddenly grabbed the edges of that healing motherfucker and torn it wide open again, revealing a whole new level of hurt, stinking and oozing with pus.

You grimace internally at that mental image. Okay, that got a bit graphic.

Maybe you're not as chill as you thought.

How much of what he'd done hadn't been him?

How much of everything that you resented about him was actually Caliborn, fucking preemptively with the Knight of Time.

Your fists clench, and you force yourself to relax.

Deep breaths there, Dave. Can't be losing your cool in front of just anyone. Just keep it together until bro wakes up, then you can abscond and go put some serious hurt on that little green shitmunching fuckstain.

==> Be John

You close the memo, ignoring the barely there tremble of your fingers as you type. You know there's probably more that needs to be said, but right now, this is all you can handle.

There are thirty-seven people in this clearing, including yourself, and even though you have been co-leading with Karkat, you still feel as though the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

All you want to do is look at your dad and ask him to take care of this. He'd always been a pinnacle of strength. Always known what to do in tough situations.

But you can't.

The trolls won't trust an adult. Certainly won't trust someone who's never fought with them. (Which might be why the alpha trolls aren't paying you much attention. At least Karkat is a troll, which means they at least pay attention when he's talking.)

You'd never realized how strong the bonds that fighting together creates are. Now, you sort of wish you never had.

You sigh, massaging your temples.

You feel old. You don't like feeling this way. You want to be able to be the silly jokester again, but right now you have people depending on you, and they need the friendleader more than they need the jokester.

Ugh.

No wonder Peter Pan never wanted to grow up. It's hard.

It's hard, and you're starting to realize that maybe other people do understand.

This revelation doesn't reassure you in the slightest.

"John?" Jade's voice jolts you out of your thoughts, and you scrub your hands briskly over your face before turning your attention to her.

It doesn't matter how tired you are, you need to be awake now.

"What's up Jade?" You try for a grin, and Jade smiles back, but her eyes don't have the same sparkle you're used to, and you realize with a jolt that she's tired too.

"I was thinking. The sun's gonna go down soon, and we'll need somewhere for everyone to sleep. My house is up on the smaller mountain, and I'm pretty sure I can teleport us all up there, but I kinda want to clear it out first." she hesitates, biting her lower lip, "Grandpa... he ah, had a lot of hunting trophies, and stuff that he found on his adventures laying around. It takes up most of the house, really. I was thinking, if I cleaned it all up, and put it in boxes or something, then it'd be comfortable for everyone?"

She makes the last statement sound like a question, and you wrap her up in a hug.

"Are you sure, Jade? I know your grandpa's things meant a lot to you..." You don't want her to feel like she needs to throw anything out, but it would be nice to sleep in an actual house, rather than on a platform, or in a refurbished laboratory.

"Nah," Jade laughs wetly, rubbing her face against your shoulder as she relaxes into the hug. "Actually, I kinda hated all that junk. It just sat around, taking up space and being sorta creepy. Honestly, I think half the reason my house is so big is so that he had somewhere to store it all. I can shrink it all down, stuff it in boxes and take it all up to his lab. I think if I do that, then there's be enough space for everyone to at least have their own room."

You nod, tightening your hold for a moment before stepping back and looking at her. "Do you want help?"

She shrugs. "I think I'll be all right on my own."

"Take Equius and Nepeta with you." Karkat orders from behind you, and you jump, half spinning to face him.

A flicker of sadistic amusement races through his grey eyes, and you mock glare, even as Jade dissolves into giggles from where you'd shoved her behind you.

"What?" You ask, and Karkat scoffs.

"I wasn't talking to you! Jade, take Equius and Nepeta with you. Equius'll be able to help with carrying shit, and you mentioned that your lusus' lusus was a hunter. ‘Peta'll love to see that shit. Get them the fuck out of here, and give them something to do before I kill them both myself."

You raise one eyebrow at Karkat as Jane chirps her agreement and skips off, her usual high spirits seemingly restored.

"What?" he demands, crossing his arms defensively and looking over at where the Alpha trolls have grouped themselves.

You shrugs, following his gaze. "Nothing. I just think it was nice of you, giving Jade company and letting Equius and Nepeta feel useful at the same time."

Your lips curl into a genuine grin as he starts spluttering denials of any such thing, it just makes sense for no one to go off alone, after all you have no idea what lives here, or how dangerous it is, or-

"Karkat! Fine! You didn't do anything nice! You were simply being an excellent leader, and I bow before your greater wisdom and experience!"

The rush of denial subsides, and a ruddy flush climbs his cheeks as you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from snickering.

Karkat is just too easy.

"I gotta go check on Dave- Red Dave" you correct yourself, "and Bro."

The troll grumbles something under his breath, but waves you off and stalks over to the cluster of Alpha trolls, persumably to try to talk sense into his Dancestor, Kankri.

You aren’t sure what his problem is, and from the sound of some of Karkat’s rants, you aren’t sure you want to know what Kankri’s problem is. You figure it’s probably better to let Karkat handle it, so you shrug off Karkat's abrupt exit and look around, trying to spot Dave.

He is, of course, near Bro, leaning back against a tree with such an air of calculated nonchalance that you cringe.

To any outside, he would look like the picture of calm disinterest, but you can see the way his fingers twitch against the grass, like he's reaching, then stopping himself, then reaching again for a sword, and as you get closer, you can see the tensing of his jaw as he grinds his teeth.

Dave is _pissed._

And you get to be the one to tell him he can't go whale on the guy who hurt his bro.

Yeah. This is going to go so well for you.

You can tell.

==> Be a fan of pipes.

You are now Joseph Egbert, John's father, and you are doing your damnedest not to be overwhelmed by the situation you have found yourself in.

Somehow, in the last three years, your son has grown up, and you missed it. According to the cheerful blond girl, you were dead for most of the time, which makes it okay.

You do not think that it is okay.

Recently, you woke up next to a nearly identical copy of yourself, a beautiful blonde woman who you last remember as having been on a date with, and a tall man with white-blond hair and oddly angular sunglasses. Surrounding you were some thirty-three teenagers.

One of them is your son.

You watch as he calls for status update and, when panic threatens to overtake the other teenager, (you're not sure why, not at first,) you watch as he _bellows_ , wind sweeping across the small crowd.

Your heart swells with pride as the blonde girl, clad in yellow and orange that reminds you of sunrise and warmth follows his lead _(she's flying. Honestly flying, as casually as you would take a step, and no one seems to notice at all)_ , and you are so, _so_ glad that when he sees you he flies into your arms as though he were four years old again.

(You try not to think about the fact that he literally flew.)

(You also try not to register the fact that the majority of the teenagers are now taller, with grey skin and horns and are _demonstrably not human._ )

You hug him tight, wordlessly accepting his apologies and trying to give him what comfort you can, even as the shortest grey-skinned creature watches the two of you, a strange look on its (his?) face.

The moment is broken, too soon, by two more flying teenagers, one held aloft by nothing more than his own seeming refusal to fall, and the other stroking the air with great beats of large, golden-red wings.

They're talking to John. John, who has stepped out of the circle of your arms, and is as serious as you have ever seen him before. John, who you suddenly realize is in clothing that closely resembles the yellow-and-orange girl (and really, you must get her name soon.). But the clothes are all shades of blue, and the symbol on his chest is different, and the hood is long and something about this is niggling in the back of your head. It seems faintly familiar and you aren't sure but...

You hear something about an evacuation, and John staying behind to talk to (or is it _talk to_?) the military force on its way, and you step forward, ready to assert your parental status and refuse to let him stay behind.

But you make contact, and suddenly there's an enormous hammer in his hand, and he's spun around and he's suddenly, inexplicably _dangerous_.

You can see that you have a lot to catch up on.

The dangerous John is gone in an instant though, and your son is all apologies, so you smile, and crack a joke, and the scenery blurs away in a flash of green, fading to living, more natural green.

You are in a forest, somewhere far away from your son, and you are confused.

Now, you have shared your pipe tobacco with the eerily similar man. You have watched groups form, then split apart, and reform in different configurations, as people chat and catch up. You can't understand the language the grey creatures are speaking, but apparently all the human teenagers can, and you find out why when a young woman who looks strikingly like John bounces up to you, gives your double a fierce hug, introduces herself to you as Jane Crocker, and hands both of you a small earpiece.

"They're translators." She explains. "Somehow everything gets translated to the proper language when we're using the chat clients, but not when we're speaking out loud. Rose and Kanaya whipped these up for everyone to use."

She giggles, and leans in like she's about to impart a secret. "I'm fairly certain that black majyyk was involved in some way, but they've been fairly benign so far, so don't tell Karkat!"

Her smile is impish, and she gives your double another fierce hug before a creature in a yellow and orange outfit similar to the blond girl's falls out of the sky, blue, pixie-like wings folded against her back as she chirps and snarls and chirrs at Jane, gestulating in obvious irritation.

Your double wastes no time in applying earpiece to ear, and you follow suit, wincing slightly at the chill of the (metal? Plastic?) material against your ear.

The creature's voice changes, subtly, until all you hear is english, being spoken in a derisive tone, by a husky female voice.

"-on't even know what the fuck is going on, but Rose is all 'get all the life players right now' like the Condesce her gogdamm self!"

"All right! I get it! Jesus fuck, Vriska! I'll go see what she wants!"

"Language." the automatic parental reprimand garners your double a confused, then mortified look before Jane executes a perfect x2 facepalm combo.

"What?" the creature, Vriska, presumably, frowns, first at your double, then at Jane. "You did give him one of those translator things, right?" Jane nods, and Vriska raises one eyebrow.

"So why's he sayin' language?"

You watch, amused, and Jane flails for a moment, then absconds without ever answering the other female.

Vriska eyes the two of you for a moment, and you (do not, not even a little bit,) take note of the multiple pupils in her left eye before she shrugs and flies off without a word to either of you.

Slowly, deliberately, you puff on your pipe.

Compared to everything else, the shriek of rage from the blonde girl, her subsequent vanishing act, and even the memo seem within the bounds of normality.

You are just having to redefine what normality actually means.

It would be easier if you knew what was going on.

==> Be an ex-game mechanic

You weren't sure what you were expecting when the game was finished. You thought that you might vanish, disappearing into the void like all the other doomed Daves. You hoped that maybe you would be blended with the real Dave. Given to him as a kind of memory packet, a series of notes that would blend in with his own rhythm.

Instead you get this. Your own body back, with the addition of a pair of huge unwieldy wings.

Once again, that fucking game has managed to screw you over.

It's bearable, you suppose. Being a freak of nature on top of all the other shit. You'd gotten used to the stares being albino got you. You can get used disgust. It's gonna be hell relearning to fight with these things though, and for half a second you consider just cutting them off.

You're surrounded by god tiers. It's not like they'd let you die. You hope.

But you've gotten used to flying, rather than walking, and used to being able to take a fight into three dimensions, if you need to, so you shelve the idea for now.

You're pissed, and a little scared when you find out about Bro, but he's got Alpha Dave sitting with him, keeping an eye on things, so you keep your distance. Neither of you are too comfortable with the other, for all you can co-exist, and you wonder if this is what it's like for those people who go on tv with their long-lost twin.

You think it might be, a little. Except you have all of Alpha Dave's memories, up to the part where Egbert listened to that fucking troll bitch and got his dumb ass killed by his denizen.

You know his likes, and his dislikes, and everything he never wanted any other living being to know.

He knows the same about you, and you're both uncomfortable with someone else having that level of knowledge about you.

But the two of you are a pair of cool ass peas in a pod. Neither of you are gonna go around spilling any emotional beans. Those beans will remain unspilled. They will be so unspilled they might as well still be on the fucking vine, ripening in the sun.

They-

Someone sits down next to the rock you're perched on, and you, very carefully, don't jump, instead glancing at them out of the corner of your eye.

"'Sup Jake."

The boy, so close to being John's identical twin, glances over at you nervously.

"Hello, um, Davesprite?"

Your title is a question, and you shrug off the irritation. You know people will need a name to call you, something to differentiate the two Daves in conversation.

"Nah, man. Beta Dave, if the other guy's around. Just Dave is fine though."

Jake fidgets, and you watch him from behind your sunglasses, waiting for him to say what's on his mind.

No one can beat you in a stand-off. You are simply the best there is.

But it doesn't seem like Jake (and for all that you're the same age, you can't help thinking of him as a kid.) is willing to spill, so the two of you sit in silence, watching the Mind, and Life, and Light characters sweep through the group, taking people aside one at a time.

There aren't any flashes of light, or spectacular shows of power, but each person they work on wakes up with a dazed, dreamlike quality about them, as though they aren't quite sure of something, and they're not sure what the something they're not sure about is.

It's disconcerting that Bro hasn't woken up yet, but you figure the spider bitch is keeping him under for some reason or another. You don't quite trust her, but you're willing to let it go as long as she's helping Bro.

As you've been watching the group, the sun's been setting, and the air is starting to cool. It's still warm, but apparently the temperature difference is enough to make Jake revert out of his god tier pajamas to his normal clothes, and he's huddled up, his arms wrapped around his knees, and his chin propped on those same knobby joints.

The trolls, you notice are starting to perk up. As the light level lowers, they get louder, more enthusiastic, and it makes you grin. It's dark enough now that you take off your shades, shoving them up to rest on the top of your head so you can look around.

Kanaya, of course, has started to glow, following Rose around so that your ecto-sis had light to work her majyyk by.

Roxy and one of the trolls, the ridiculously skinny one, with two pairs of horns, are sitting on the other side of the clearing, sitting across from each other, each with a laptop (or husktop) open in front of them, bickering. Roxy's grin is just short of evil, and the irritation on the troll's face is clear, even from here. You nudge Jake, and nod in their direction, and he laughs softly, then glances up at you.

"What do you do, when you realize that you've messed something up so badly there's a very good chance things will never be the same?"

"Stop trying to make things go back to the way they were, and roll with the new situation." You say instantly, your mind flying back to your doomed relationship with Jade.

Jake sighs unhappily.

"I was bally well afraid you were going to say that." He mutters to his knees, and you shrug, the motion made even more expressive by your wings following the motion.

"That's all I got. Granted, I'm not the best dude at following my own advice, but if there's one thing I learned from the game, it's that you can't go back, not really. You can only move forward."

Jake's smile is wry.

"Spoken like a true Time player." He says, and you pause, thinking about what you said.

"Aww man, I didn't even think of it like that. Still, that just makes it even more true. It's like, you can't stop moving forward. Hesitate, and you'll get old waiting for stuff to change. Retreat, and there’s a good chance you’ll get stabbed in the back. You have to move forward, y’know?”

Jake hums thoughtfully, but doesn't reply.

You hope he's thinking about what you said. That was a pretty dope pearl of wisdom you just dropped.

You notice Rose approaching you, and stand, sliding your shades back onto your face. Looks like it's your turn to get your brain scan on.

==> Be John again

You can't be John. John is currently taking a very sneaky nap against Dave. Try again.

==> Be the mother.

That you can do.

You are Roxanne Lalonde, and you are sure that you have never wanted a martini more in your entire life.

You are currently, according to the girl who looks just like you sixteen years ago, on an island somewhere in the south pacific. There are some thirty-three teenagers of varying age, species, and gender, in the clearing with you, and only three other adults.

You originally thought that you, as an adult, should probably take charge. Instead, two of the teenagers did, with an ease that implied they had been in charge for quite a while.

So you sat back to watch, instead, accepting the device the girl (Jane, who looks so familiar, but you can't put your finger on why) passes you, and tucking it into your ear in the hopes that once you can understand more than half the speech around you, you'll have a better idea what's going on.

That is not the case.

Instead, you are left more confused, as terminology you aren't familiar with is tossed around, and words you are familiar with are used in unfamiliar ways.

So you are left with trying to understand the most basic of all language; body language.

You do your best to look past the grey skin and horns, and sharp teeth and claws, and look at how they present themselves to others, and how they hold themselves when they think no one is looking.

You watch the human children as they interact with the other, alien creatures, and how their bodies shift.

You watch, and you see children, too thin, with eyes that are just shy of wild. You think _food shortage_.

You see wariness, and readiness, and barely hidden anger and fear, and think _war._

You see waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop, and tense anticipation, and oh-god-why-does-this-keep-happening, and know that some of them aren't sure that whatever they've been through is over.

You watch as small touches are exchanged between some and accepted, and small advances rebuffed between others, and you know that there are many more complexities that you aren't seeing.

You watch as tense faces slowly relax as the sun goes down, and realize _nocturnal._

You watch a female orbit your daughter, always keeping Rose within sight, and you smile, because Rose is doing the same thing, and you don't think either of them notice.

You watch strange powers being used, and try not to make any judgements at all, simply cataloguing what you see so that when you get the opportunity you can ask questions.

You ignore your body's demands for food, and it's even more insistent demands for alcohol in favor of watching while trying not to look like you're watching, and by the time the strange girl in the black, hooded tunic reappears, you aren't sure you've really learned anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is cleared out, everyone relocates. Shit goes down, and Kankri is stick-a-fork-in-him-done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost feel bad about this chapter. It was written whilst christmas music played continuously in the background, and is the most drama filled chapter I've ever written, ever.

==> Be Dave again.

You are Dave, as you always have been, and a little bit ago your best friend wandered over, sat down next to you, and passed out with his head on your shoulder.

You aren't sure why he fell asleep so easily, not when no one is making any real effort to keep it down, but you don't make any move to wake him.

Hey, he's had a hard time lately. He deserves to have a nap.

You're pretty sure he wanted to talk to you. It'd been written on his face when he'd come over. But instead you get this; sleeping John, with his head on your shoulder, and a slowly spreading damp spot on your god tier pajamas that you are doing your best to ignore.

No seriously, what wet patch?

You've kept Bro in your peripheral view at all times since you've sat down, but there's been no change that you could see, aside from Vriska coming over to take her dancestor's place. Maybe she's why John fell asleep?

You wouldn't put it past her, even if you can't see how it might benefit her.

Still, you might be just a little relieved that John didn't have a chance to talk to you about whatever was on his mind. You're a little preoccupied with coming up with new ways you're going to dismember that little green fucker, and you feel like you really shouldn't split your concentration. Some things are just worth the full and complete attention of a Strider.

A flash of green and a faint crackle has you tense and wary. You know that Bec Noir is dead and gone, but you've been on guard against that asshole for so long that any hint he might have just shown up sends adrenaline coursing through you like a shot.

But it's just Jade, just like it's always been recently, and she's glancing around, looking for someone.

She looks surprised to see you and John sitting together, and you can see her realizing that John is asleep by the way her expression softens, then turns regretful.

You shift, just slightly, as she approaches, trying to nudge John awake without letting him slide off your shoulder and into your lap.

He shifts slightly, mumbles, and doesn't wake, and Jade smiles.

"Hey." She says, softly, trying not to wake up her ectobrother, you guess.

"Sup." Your voice is smooth. Even. Unchanged. You are a Strider, and you are the chillest motherfucker on this island.

Possibly the planet.

"Equius, Nepeta and I just finished getting the house mostly cleared out." Jade informs you, flopping to the ground on your open side. "I'm going to start transporting people up there, and then, when I'm done, I'm going to sleep for a week."

You nod. "I hear you."

Jade sighs, staring up at the bits of night sky visible through the trees, then levers herself to her feet with a groan.

"Time to go, I guess." she mutters, and frowns in concentration.

The green glow flickers into life around her, and then explodes outward.

When the spot finally clear from your eyes, you're sitting with your back against a wall, facing a couch that holds the still sleeping figure of your bro. John's still asleep on your shoulder, and everyone else is grumbling with some degree of dissatisfaction at the lack of warning.

Jade is, you think with a rush of fondness, such a showoff.

But then, so are all of you to one extent or another.

After all, it can't really be considered showing off, when you're trying to show your (friends? Partners?) allies exactly what they can expect you to be able to do in a fight.

"Nice one." You say, and get a wide smile in return.

"We managed to unearth the kitchen." Jade says abruptly. "I didn't even know I had one, it was so stuffed with grandpa's old crap, but it's cleaned out now."

Jade looks troubled, and you tilt your head consideringly.

"Dave, I don't even know how to cook. Do you?"

You shrug the shoulder not burdened with John's fat head. "Nah. Bro and I ordered out most of the time. I mean, I can do toast, and I pour a mean bowl of cereal, but that's about it. I thought you lived alone, how do you not know how to cook?"

Jade shifts uncomfortably. "I used to just toss stuff into my cookalizer and eat whatever came out."

You grimace, remembering some of the things that had come out of the cookalyzer when she'd tried to cook alchemized food. It might have been food, and it may have kept you all alive, but it sure as hell didn't taste like anything you'd want in your mouth any time soon.

You let your forehead crease, just a little, as your gaze wanders around the room. You wouldn't trust any of the trolls to make something that humans could eat. John can sort of cook, but he's conked the hell out. Bro can make some mad grilled cheese, but he's dead to the world too, and the last time someone asked Rose to cook, she'd almost blown up the cookalyzer somehow.

(No one had asked how. No one really wanted to irritate her when she had _that_ look on her face.)

Your eyes land on a pair of fedoras, and you bang your head backwards against the wall.

"We are idiots." You inform Jade gravely, and she frowns.

"Howso?"

"John's dad. Hell, _Jane's_ dad. Even Rose's mom. They should know how to cook, shouldn't they?"

Jade's eyes light up, and she grins at you. "John was complaining about his dad making lots of cake before the game!" She agrees, "I can't believe I didn't think of that! I'll go talk to them now!"

And in a whirl of black and grey, she was bouncing across the room, a wide smile on her face and her dog ears perked up happily.

You watch her talk to the adults for a few moments, then the four of them leave the room, Jade leading them through the door and out of sight. Hopefully that means there'll be food available soon. You're hungry enough you could eat a hoofbeast.

Augh.

Horse. You mean horse.

With a sigh, you let your gaze wander around the room.

It's big; all thirty-whatever of you fit with no problem, and the ceiling is ridiculously high. The floor is wood, as opposed to the cheap linolium or shitty shag carpet that covered the floors of your and Bro's apartment.

Enormous floor to ceiling windows cover one wall, while a fireplace that looks big enough for three of you to _stand_ in is the main attraction of the opposite wall.

Ancient looking tapestries and old paintings are hung on the other two walls, along with a mishmash of pictures of women that have faded to a weird sort of blue. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how they've been hung, and you can appreciate the ironic mixture of old and new to create something that's got a weird sort of eclectic appeal.

You think you may have liked Jade's grandpa, if you'd ever met him.

There's not a lot of furniture in here; just the couch Bro is laying on, and a couple of armchairs, but Jade must have raided every single room in the house for pillows, cushions and blankets, because there, on the ridiculously long table closest to the door, are stacks and stack and _stacks_ of warm looking blankets, huge fluffy pillows, and cushions of all sizes and colors.

The trolls are spreading out, and piles of _stuff_ are appearing, so it seems like they're making themselves comfortable, and you desperately want to follow suit, but John is leaning on you still, and you can't really move for fear of waking him.

You sigh, shifting slightly to try to get comfortable, and reach up to tap your iShades into activity.

\--turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 21:14--

TG: hey rose.

TG: do me a favor?

TT: What do you need?

TG: a bunch of blankets and shit. egberts passed the fuck out on me. i cant move and my ass is falling asleep.

TT: Oh my. That sounds dire.

TG: it is. the direst. seriously rose, you're my only hope. hurry before my ass falls off because of this hard as fuck floor.

TT: I don't know, this sounds like an opportunity to observe a never before seen medical condition. I may have to decline your request.

TT: For science, of course. You understand, don't you brother dear?

TG: you really want to deny the world an ass this fine? that's just cruel and unusual punishment right there, rose. what did the world ever do to you? hell, what did my ass ever do to deserve this level of animosity?

TT: You may have a point. Thinking about it, it does seem unnecessarily cruel to deprive the world of your level of gluteal endowment.

\--TT has ceased pestering TG--

You watch as Rose emerges from somewhere out of sight, glides over to the table, snaps up blankets, pillows and cushions into her sylladex with quick efficiency, then sweeps towards you.

"Thanks." You say as she starts to unload the pile of bedding.

She glances at you out of the corner of one eye, then nods. "It was no trouble. We have figured out the most efficient way to rotate so that some of the 'healers' may rest while the others work."

Healers was in quotes, and you nod. "Good to hear. It'd be pretty lame to get overworked now that we're out."

Two cushions get placed side by side on John's free side, and Rose helps you ease John off your shoulder and onto the cushions.

Once he's safely down, you stand, wincing slightly as your ass protests.

Fuck, you'd never thought you'd hurt just from fucking sitting before.

Rose fiddles idly with the fringed edge of one of the larger cushions she'd brought over as you drag John's bed over next to the couch Bro was passed out on, then tosses it to you, and you start building a proper nest of pillows, cushions, and blankets.

Occasionally Rose will twitch a pillow into a better position, or adjust how one of the cushions is lined up with the others, but otherwise she sticks with handing you the materials for the nest bed.

When she runs out, you step back and survey your handiwork, nodding once in satisfaction.

It's big enough for you and the other human kids, if they want to sleep close to someone relatively familiar, close enough to Bro that you'll be able to tell if anything changes while you sleep, and in clear sight of the door. Plus it looks comfy as hell.

You do good work.

Well, you amend, glancing over at your ectosister, you and Rose do good work.

Rose, however, isn't looking at the makeshift bed, and you follow her gaze over to where John's female counterpart, Jane, is kneeling at Gamzee's head.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Gamzee.

You burst into motion, and Rose is already gone, her wands trailing crackling sparks as she books it across the room, just barely managing to knock Jane out of the way before the swipe of a juggling pin would have (probably) taken her head off.

"Hold him down!" Rose shouts, and in the next instant there are five of you, all throwing yourselves at Gamzee in an attempt to grab a limb and hold it.

Other Daves are thrown away with almost contemptuous ease, one of them hitting the wall with a sickening crack that you do your best to ignore. One Dave down, an infinite number more available.

Someone is shouting in the background, trying to get the spider bitch to do her sleep whammy, but you can't focus on that, you have to keep all of your attention on Gamzee, watching his moves so that when you send yourselves back into the past you'll know how he's going to respond.

But you aren't just sitting back and watching, oh no. That's not your style. You're darting in and out of the growing fray like a streak of the awesomest motherfucking lightning there is. Gamzee's bleeding out of half a dozen shallow cuts already, but you're at a disadvantage and you know it. You're trying not to kill him, and he's got no problems killing you.

Spider bitch's voice is shouting back, calling for someone, but there's something wrong with you. You can see tendrils of dark-edged purple creeping over everything, and your attacks are getting more erratic.

There's something wrong with you. You can't breathe. You're slowing down, and a heavy, mindless terror is trying to drag you down. You're struggling, looking around wildly for the cause, and a pair of glowing purple eyes in one corner catch your attention.

Of course. Gamzee the second. Thinner, more delicate looking, but no less dangerous.

You try to flash step over. You're not sure what you're going to do. All you can think of is _making him stop_.

Stop what, you're not sure, but _he is doing something to you, and he is in your head, and you want him to stop!_

But you're slow, bogged down by something, and you can't reach him, and someone is shrieking, with rage or fear or some combination of the two, and you _have to make him stop_.

Something (someone?) clubs you over the back of the head, and blessed darkness envelopes you even as the gleaming purple eyes follow you down.

==> Figure out what the fuck just happened.

You'd woken to panicked shouting and angry screaming and you'd had a sword in your hand before your eyes were even properly open.

The first thing you see is the (too still, the angle of his head is wrong, oh fuck, oh shit) body of your younger brother laying crumpled at the base of the wall closest to you.

Your blood runs cold, and your hand tightens around your sword.

(He's not dead. He's not. He's unconcious, it'll be okay, it will it will he'snotdead)

You tear your eyes off of him, only to see another lithe, white blond body in that same ridiculous red outfit. He's been impaled on his own sword.

You wrench your eyes away, and see another, this one groaning softly, though with the way blood is bubbling at his lips, you don't think he'll be groaning for long.

Another.

And another.

And another.

Your little brother is scattered around the room, in varying states of dying or dead, and when your eyes land on a black haired kid in a blue sort-of version of Dave's weird ass outfit, standing over yet another limp Dave, with a huge hammer in one hand and panting slightly, you lose it.

All you can feel is white hot rage ( _griefpain nonononoNO! NOT DAVE!)_ , and you're moving as fast as you can. Dave is good, but you're better, and if this kid took down Dave, then you need to bring your 'A' game.

He isn't expecting an attack.

You knock him halfway across the room with your first hit, and before anyone can respond, to attack or defend, your sword slides neatly into his flesh, and in one movement, faster than the buman eye can track, you gut him.

There's someone else, some _thing_ else, hovering over one of your brothers, grey skin stained with red blood, and you _move,_ your sword removing its head easily, though with more resistance than you expected.

Thicker skin, maybe, or harder bones. Probably both. You don't care. You are going to kill _every single one_ of the motherfuckers standing over your brother's body.

Someone is howling something in a language you can't understand, and you ignore it. Your attention is caught by the pair of sickles that caught your sword just before you ran it through the kid in the most faggoty pair of orange shorts you've ever seen.

You yank your sword free of the sickles, and the grey skinned thing in front of you bares its teeth.

Harsh syllables tumble from it's mouth, but it doesn't matter that you can't understand. Your brother is dead. You have to kill the fuckers responsible.

You swipe at him, and he stutter-steps out of the way, then dives at you, leading with graceful, whirling slashes of the sickles.

You almost pause. You know that move. You taught the stutter step to Dave when he was five. It's the precurser to the flash step. How-? No. It doesn't matter. Dave is dead. And soon this thing will be too.

Your own flash step takes you behind him, poised to run it through from behind, but it's already diving forward, throwing itself into a roll that somehow brings it to its feet facing you, just out of reach of your sword.

You try again, letting your speed take you out of human perception and not stopping, even as you attack.

And the fucker dodges. Not all of them. Not even most of them. Mostly, it's just scrambling to keep from getting hit with a fatal blow, and succeeding. Every time you aim for the throat, a sickle is there to deflect it, though it's not fast enough to keep from accumulating a collection of nicks and shallow cuts around its throat.

You aim for center mass, intent on gutting it like you did the blue kid, and it's just _barely_ fast enough to keep slices from disembowling it. more cuts, deeper and more serious make themselves known in streamers of bright, candy red blood, and the stupid grey sweatshirt it'd been wearing is little more than tatters.

You ignore the blows it manages to land on you. You're used to getting cut up. You can handle a little pain, and it seems like it's not aiming to kill you.

You're not going to make the same mistake.

And now it's slowing down; maybe it's not used to extended fights at these speeds, or maybe it's the bloodloss getting to it, but you manage to land a decent hit, and one hand, still clutching a sickle, goes flying away as the creature howls in pain.

You've got the advantage now, and you press the attack, slowing down just a fraction so that it can see its death coming.

Something red slides in front of you and, reflexively, you alter your attack to a less lethal move.

Dave. Dave is wearing red, why is Dave defending this thing? It killed him, they killed him, right? Dave is dead. (Isn't he dead?)

It's not Dave standing in front of you, but another of the grey creatures, virtually identical to the one you'd just been about to kill, but in a stupid red sweatshirt instead of a grey one.

It's holding sickles as well, one holding your blade away from its side, and the other resting under your chin, the inside curve, sharp as a razor, nestled against your throat and poised to take your head off if you moved.

It's speaking, it's raspy voice sharp and dangerous, and your vision starts to blur. The last thing you see is the dumbstruck look on the face of the one in the grey sweatshirt as you fall fowards. Hopefully the red one won't move the sickle.

==> Aranea; Knock out the murderous clowns.

You're diving into the combined psyionic power of two purple bloods, and you are terrified. Your power grew in the dream bubbles, sure, but purple bloods, with their chucklevoodoos are unpredictable, and _strong_. You're fighting to wrap their power in yours, struggling to keep it contained so that they can't attempt to take control of anyone else.

Someone is shouting your name, but you can't spare any attention, you have to keep them contained. You can't let your concentration waver for an instant, or they could split the web you've wound them in. You don't want to know what would happen if they get loose.

Steel clashes, and you can feel several minds dim, then flicker out. You hope it's nobody that won't come back, but that thought is distant, and you have to keep it distant.

Except Kankri is speaking now, his voice sharp, designed to cut through noise and mental fugue, and he's ordering you to put the human male out. The adult, not any other.

He's ordering you, dropping the public personae that he's worn like a mask for sweeps, and you comply. Positive reinforcement is, after all, an accepted behaviour modification technique.

It's hard to split your attention again, but you manage to extend a tendril of your psychic power into the human's brain; just enough to hit the right spots to send him into an almost coma-like sleep, and the male drops like a suitable metaphor.

Vriska, your dancestor, is doing her best to help keep both Gamzee and Kurloz contained, but right now most of the burden is on you. You don't think you'd ever _really_ thought about how powerful the chucklevoodoos that purple bloods have are, and now that you're experiencing it, you'd really rather not.

The two of them, together? They are _immense_. Their minds are slippery, and somehow they know to work in tandem, one pushing, the other pulling, then switching when you'd only just gotten used to it. It's taking everything you have just to keep them from being able to move physically, and you're not sure how long you can hold them.

It's hard, and it _hurts_. It feels like your mind is starting to crack under the strain, and you can't imagine what Vriska might be feeling, but you _can't think of that now._

Power is offered to the two of you, with a feeling like inky blackness and unfathomable depths, and you both seize it, throwing it into your mental presences and tightening your hold on the clowns' minds.

You catch a mental image from Vriska, and clutch it like a lifeline even as the two of you start spinning webs of psyionics and power around the two minds of the two clowns. Over and under and around the threads twist, wrapping them up until their powers can't so much as twitch, so tightly bound are they.

Spidermom had, apparently, taught Vriska well.

A flash of pleasure flashes from Vriska to you at that thought, and you carefully disentangle the two of you before returning your attention to the real world.

Oh.

You are being held by one of the humans. One you'd only met in passing before. She looks remarkably similar to the female Meenah had attempted to skewer in a dream bubble.

"You fell while you were working on them." she informs you, her voice tight.

You nod.

"Thank you for your help. I don't think we would have managed to keep them without it."

"Psh! Speak for yourself, I was awesome!" Vriska's voice sounds awful, and you can't muster up the energy to look over at her.

"It was no trouble." the human says, and eases out from behind you, allowing you to sit on your own.

You try to stay upright, but it's hard, and you've just used so much energy, that it's all you can do to control your sideways topple into a sort of graceless flop.

"The bindings should be stable." You murmur, already half asleep. "But they'll have to be removed soon, or there could be additional mental damage."

"Noted."

==>Karkat; try to figure out what the fuck just happened.

You can't. There is just no way that your brain can comprehend whatever the fuck it is that just happened.

All you know is that Gamzee went crazy (er), Dave was trying to do _something_ , which led to dead Daves all over the gogdamn place, and now John is laying on the floor, his guts all over the damn place, which seems like a pretty good indicator of death, and Tavros has been parted from his head. (You are really, really, trying to ignore your missing hand, even as you clutch the stump with your remaining hand, trying to stem the flow of blood.)

Hopefully being (wrongly) killed by a vengeful adult who thinks you just murdered his hatchmate (a bunch of different times, as brutally as it seems possible) doesn't count as either a Just _or_ Heroic death... Even more, you hope that Tavros somehow manages to come back too. You know that Gamzee was flushed for him, and seeing the large horned male dead might just push him over the edge again.

You ignore Aranea and Vriska. They've done their bit, and from the looks of it, they're about to pass out where they sit.

Yup. There goes Aranea. Vriska might be staying conscious through sheer stubbornness.

Kankri is still standing in front of you, ignoring the unconscious human on the floor in front of him (he’d made no effort to catch him), and looking (for once) faintly uncomfortable as he holds his own pair of sickles loosely at his sides.

"Thanks." You say, your voice a harsh rasp, and he startles, almost dropping the sickles before they vanish back into his strife specibus.

"It was no trouble." Kankri says stiffly, "I could not stand by and allow my dancestor to be killed in front of me, even if I could understand why the human reacted as he did. This is an incredibly triggering situation, after all."

You just sigh, willing to cut Kankri a little bit of slack as you look around the room.

Gamzee and Kurloz had been dog piled by just about every troll in the room, though Nepeta and Equius were both holding on to the limp form of Meulin as though they expected her to suddenly start trying to fight her way free at any moment.

"Mother _grub_ what a fucking mess." you sigh, then whirl in place as a surge of power swells, then receeds.

That was, apparently, a bad idea, as your head spun and black spots started to encroach on your vision.

Right. Bloodloss.

Fuck.

You stagger, then sit, smack in a puddle of your own bright red blood, but you don't care. Kankri follows you down, pulling a piece of rope out of his own sylladex and tugging on your arm until you dazedly let him have it.

Blood spurts again, until he gets his fingers around what's left of your wrist enough to apply pressure, and you watch, feeling ridiculously floaty as he wraps the rope just above his hand, then tightens it down.

Oh.

A tournequit. Good plan.

More power surges, but you can't muster up the energy to see what's going on. All you can do is stare blankly at the stump of your wrist, trying to will away the blackness at the edges of your vision.

Kankri is talking.

Kankri is always talking, but this time it's different. You can't hear the words, but you can hear the tone, and it's not sanctimonious at all, there's an unfamiliar undercurrent, and it makes you want to shoosh him, and pap him, and say that everything will be all right, but you don't have the energy, so you just lean forward, until your head thumps against his shoulder.

He goes completely and utterly still, for once, and you can't hear him talking. You want to check, want to sit up and make sure he's all right, but you can't move, and his shoulder is surprisingly comfortable, so maybe it'd be all right if you just... stayed here for a bit.

Just a little while.

Just... a couple... of minutes...

==> Be Kankri

You are Kankri Vantas, and there is _absolutely nothing_ about this situation that is not problematic.

Both of the so-called 'leaders' are now out of commision, at least until the blue one, John, revives. Which means that someone will make a power play in three... two...

"Why da shell ain't we killin' these motherglubbers off?" Meenah's voice is strident, and you can see her glaring from the adult human, to the now thoroughly tied up clowns.

Sometimes you wish you weren’t right so often.

She's twirling her 2x3dent idly, but you know from experience exactly how fast she can be with it.

"We cannot be sure that they were acting of their own volition." The scary blonde female, (you think her name is Rose,) speaks up, but her voice is tight with anger.

"So?" Meenah's drawl is lazy, but the increased speed of her whirling 2x3dent is anything but.

"So, we cannot hold an individual responsible for actions they take while mind controlled." Rose is watching Meenah, her purple eyes narrowed.

"This is not the first time that Gamzee has attempted to kill most of us." Porrim's dancestor, Kanaya, says calmly, withdrawing a tube of lipstick from her sylladex.

Rose tenses slightly, but says nothing as Kanaya walks forward to stare down at Gamzee's bound form.

"It seems as though it would be perfectly justifiable in preventing there from being a recurrence."

The tube of lipstick is now a chainsaw, but you never saw it change shape.

This is getting out of hand, but they never listened to you when you were the leader, not during your session, or after you all died.

Fuck.

A light touch on your free shoulder brings your attention to the beige clad human, the one who kicked off this whole mess.

She's holding Karkat's severed hand, and looking squeamish, but she steels herself when you look at her.

"I think I can fix this." she murmurs, "I already revived Tavros."

You give her a long, measuring look, then sigh, and ease Karkat off of your shoulder and onto the floor, wincing as he ends up laying in a puddle of his own blood.

_So_ problematic.

She kneels next to him, ignoring the blood, and you decide to let her get on with it. Maybe you'll be able to avert another bloodbath in the meantime.

"I do not think that killing either Kurloz or Gamzee with fix anything." You say clearly, interrupting whatever it was Meenah had been saying.

You don't care. She'd been the biggest obstacle to completing your session, and it was about time that somebody _shut her down._

"In fact," You continue, stalking forward, "if there is anyone out of the people present who should be killed for past, present, or possible future crimes, than shouldn't it be the only one out of us who grew up into a position of true power? The troll who ordered the extinction or enslavement of thousands of civilizations? The troll who not only redefined the word 'cull' to mean killing those _she_ deemed unfit to live, rather than caring for those unfit to do so for themselves? Who _willingly_ served Lord English, brought about the extinction of our species, and that of the humans, killed not only us, but also our post scratch counterparts _and our dancestors_ , and tried to use every single one of us to betray Lord English once she decided she was 'done' working for him? Well Meenah? Doesn't that sound like the more dangerous troll? Shouldn't we, for our safety, kill _you_?"

The last sentence is practically hissed, and you smile, and know that it is a thin, edged, dangerous smile, but you don't care.

This isn't Beforus, and you are tired of talking and talking and _talking_ when no one listens to you. You are the Seer of fucking Blood, and you _met_ the Signless in the dream bubbles. You might have grown up in a mostly peaceful world, but he didn't and the two of you had spoken for a long time, debating ethics, and morality, and how to change minds, or even just make people _think_. You might not think that a violent revolution is ever necessarily the _right_ thing to do, but you had, eventually, reluctantly, agreed that _sometimes it was necessary._

Meenah's eyes are wide, and she's staring at you, the 2x3dent completely motionless at her side.

You glance over at Kanaya, whose eyes are narrowed thoughtfully, then turn your full attention back to Meenah, ignoring the way her teeth are gritted and the furious fuschia flush rising on her cheeks.

"I think," You say, an edge in your voice, "That the Makaras need to be released from any lingering mental control, and evaluated. If they will still pose a threat to us, then we will _all_ determine their fate. Not just you."

"You have no right to speak to a highblood in such a manner!" Horuss' dancestor thunders, and you whirl on him.

" _This is not Alternia!_ " You shout back, "And it isn't Beforus either! I _refuse_ to spend the rest of my probably short life catering to customs that have no intrinsic value!"

You spin back towards Meenah, rage coursing through your veins. "Those two are the only purple bloods left, full stop. Killing them unnecessarily will most likely remove purple from the hemospectrum, therefore, _we will not kill them unless there is no other choice._ "

Meenah's eyes are narrowed, but there's something like relief behind her eyes when the 2x3dent disappears back into her strife specibus, and you turn to pin Kanaya with another look.

For a moment, it looks like the female is going to saw them in half regardless, but she glances over at Rose, slumps slightly, and her weapon also disappears.

You, very carefully, don't let yourself sag with relief.

This is the first time you've let yourself go in public in _sweeps._ Not since you figured out that yelling would only get you a pat on the head and a healthy dose of condescension from any other troll that was around. You'd tried for so long to get people to listen, that in the end you had to content yourself with the idea that maybe if you spoke _enough_ some of what you said would be internalized without their realizing it.

And now, you were done. Done trying to get people to listen to words. Maybe they'd get it if they _saw_. And this place, with its small population of trolls, would be no better opportunity for you to affect change.

"That was kinda hot."

And with four words, the other blonde human female manages to completely _shatter_ the mood.

You can’t help it, there is no resisting the urge.

Both of your palms meet your face with a resounding, satisfying _‘smack’_.

==> Roxy; be impressed.

You watch as Kankri, the troll you'd been told to avoid unless you wanted your ears talked off about social issues, and problems with equality, or the hemowhatever, completely loses his cool, and you feel yourself start to smile.

Now that's the kinda guy you could get to like. He's not taking any of the shit that that big guy, the super strong one or whatever, is trying to dish out, either, and he's cuttin' that fish chick down with words so sharp they might as well be blades.

You're full on grinning by the time he's done, and the words slip out before you can even think to stop them.

"That was kinda hot."

Everyone turns to stare at you, and whoa, that is a lot of eyes, but you shrug, your grin going crooked.

"What? That troll has one talented tongue."

Several pairs of eyes widen, and mulitcolor blushes spring up everywhere, even as they all pretend they were never looking at you at all.

Rose catches your eye, a smirk on her lips, and you grin broadly at her and wink before looking back at the troll dude in the red sweater.

You can see his blush around the 2x facepalm combo he's got goin' on, and he moves his hands to glare at you for a brief moment before turning to get his leader back on.

You smile briefly at the sight, then turn back to your laptop. You think you might be on to something, and code waits for no woman!

Besides. You can't let that troll hacker beat you to the prize. He'd made the mistake of saying that he'd find out where the recording of your sessions came from before you. He'd said that he was better than you, and you can't have that.

You are the best hacker. It is you.

Your eyes narrow, and you crack your knuckles.

Time to take a smug, condescending troll jerk down.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade keeps the guardians company, Eridan is stealthy as fuck, John has a nice shower, and Karkat is now a maid.

==>Jade; keep the guardians busy.

You cringe slightly at a sudden spurt of thumping and muffled shouts, glancing nervously over at the three adults in your kitchen.

Somehow, they'd unearthed cans of soup, tins of SPAM, an assortment of dry ingredients, and even some frozen dinners that you had no clue even existed in your house.

They seemed completely oblivious, and you glanced toward the kitchen door.

Maybe you should go check on the others.

Ooooh, but what if one of the parents got worried and followed you? That could be bad!

Unless it's just some of the trolls doing one of their weird black romance thingys...

But that would be awkward to walk in on, too!

Some more faint thumps, then a resounding _crash!_ shakes the house, and one of the Dads pauses, glancing over at you.

You smile broadly at him, and hop up to sit on the counter out of the way.

"I'm so glad that the game brought you back when we won!" You chirp, "John and Rose were really sad when you died. I'll bet they're super happy you guys are back, now, just like Jane is super glad that you're safe!"

You can't tell the difference between Dad Crocker and Dad Egbert, but one of them pauses his preparation of... something, and looks at you.

"What game is this?" He asks, and you tilt your head questioningly at him, swinging your legs idly.

"None, right now!" You chirp, "But, well, we were all playing Sburb. Well, actually, the trolls were playing Sgrub, but that's the same thing, really. Just a different name. But we won! It's over, and we'll never have to play it again."

You frown for a moment, and worry at your lower lip with your teeth. "I hope, at least."

"The grey skinned creatures, those are trolls?" the same dad asks, and you nod.

"Yuppers! They're from a different planet! Actually, they're from two different versions of the same planet that is still not Earth!" You grin broadly at them, "Oh geeze, this is kind of embarrassing, but I don't know which Dad you are! I just can't tell!"  
A slow smile tilts his lips up, and he picks up the mixing bowl he'd been adding ingredients to and begins to whisk the contents. "I am John's father."

You beam. "Great! I'm Jade Harley! It's nice to meet you Mister Egbert!"

He nods, "John spoke of you often. You are a good friend to him. It's a pleasure, Miss Harley."

You grin at him, fiddling with the fabric of your god tier pajamas as you try to think of what to say next.

"So what exactly is the Sburb?" Mom Lalond asks distractedly, frowning at the contents of the freezer. "And is there a grocery store nearby?"

You answer the second question first. "There isn't. I'm the only one who lives here, or I was, but now you're all here too, and that's great! I used to get weekly supply drops, but I kinda don't want to go check the drop point, 'cause if I'm still getting them, the ones I didn't pick up are probably pretty gross by now..."

You trail off, your nose wrinkling at the idea of the cleaning up you'd have to do on the hill the drops were usually made to.

"Anyway!" You chirp, forcing your brain away from that. "The game. You have lost it. Ummm..."

Mister Egbert raises one eyebrow at you, and you duck your head.

"But no, seriously, Sburb. It's a game. And we didn’t lose it, we won! Anyways, Sburb is a game where the players have to make a new universe before the war between Derse and Prospit is won. Derse always wins, because they can sling meteors at Skaia, which is the planet the war takes place on. Skaia has this sort of built in protection mechanism, which redirects the meteors from it, to a different planet, to give the players more time. That planet is the planet the session's players came from. When the Alpha trolls played, the meteors all hit Beforus. When the Beta trolls played, they hit Alternia. When us humans played, the meteors hit Earth."

You shrug slightly, then cringe at a particularly resounding shout echoes through the halls to the kitchen.

The adults still, and you start talking again, trying to distract them.

"So yeah! There's a planet for each player, and you have to go through quests and stuff to figure out your powers, until you meet your Denizen, the big monster thing that lives in the center of your planet!"

Mister Egbert is watching you with one eyebrow raised, like 'yes, I know you're trying to distract us. I'll let you get away with it this time.'

Umm... that's not at all freaky.

"So that's pretty much it." You say. "The basics, at least. Every session is different, I think. At least, all four of our sessions have been different."

Missus Lalonde humms thoughtfully as she does something (probably arcane) with the stove.

"Tell us about your session?" she asks, and you brighten.

"Sure! What do you want to know?"

"What are/is the trolls/god tier?"

Two voices speak at once, and you grin, looking between Rose's mom and Jane's dad.

"The trolls are aliens." You say, addressing Mom Lalonde's question first. "There's two groups of them, one from the original session, their planet was called Beforus, and the other is from after the scratch, they're from Alternia. They're... really different from humans, actually."

You frown. Actually, it'd be a good idea to fill them in about some of what you've learned about trolls, even if it's just to keep them from trying to interfere with a kismesis and getting hurt. Hmmm... better answer Dad Crocker, first.

"God tier is... a different set of levels." You say, then shake your head, your dog ears twitching with annoyance. "Except not really. It's like... um... Like if you've hit the highest level you can as a regular player? And then you do a special quest, you can hit God Tier, and become an even more powerful player. You get more powers relating to your title, and you get a major boost in power. I'm the Witch of Space, so I can tell where things are without looking, teleport (though that's partially because of Bec), make things bigger or smaller, and move things. All of us humans are god tier, but I don't know how many trolls are."

Jane's dad nods thoughtfully, and you watch as John's dad carefully pours the contents of his mixing bowl into a pan, then slides the pan into the oven, easily working around the other people in the kitchen.

"Hey Jade?" John's voice jolts you out of your reverie, and your eyes fly over to where John is peeking around the kitchen door.

"Hi John!" You grin, waving cheerfully, "What's up?"

"Can you show me where the bathroom is? We're all going to need it sooner or later."

You nod, sliding off the counter and practically skipping over to him. "Sure thing!"

You swing around the door, catch a good look at John's blood-soaked front, and poke your head back into the kitchen.

"I'll be right back!"

Then the door is shut behind you, and you're hustling your as-good-as-brother down the hall.

"JOHN!" Your voice is, very carefully, a whisper-shriek, "What happened?!?"

John grins sheepishly, "Ah, well, Gamzee might have... not reacted well to Jane and... Latula, I think? trying to check for traces of Lord English in his head. He kinda went nuts, and then there were Daves everywhere, and then Dave started trying to kill everyone else, so I had to knock him out, but when I did, I guess Bro woke up or something? And there were dead Daves all over the place, so um... he didn't really react well to seeing me hit Dave with my hammer and kinda killed me. From what I saw when I revived, Karkat and Kankri kept him from killing anyone else until Aranea or Vriska took care of him, but your living room is kinda a mess."

He chuckles a little, "Sorry about that."

You sigh. "Oh jeeze... Are you okay? Is Dave okay?"

"Yeah! I’m fine! And Dave is too; I just knocked him out." John nods eagerly, then pauses, looking worried. "I might have hit him too hard, actually. He might have a concussion. Oops..."

You sigh, pulling him down a different corridor and opening a door. "Here. Bathroom. Shower and get all that blood off of you, it reeks."

John nods, and steps into the room, already stripping off the ruined god tier hoodie.

You roll your eyes and go to close the door.

"Jade." John's voice stops you, and it's so serious that you can't help but look at him.

"I'm sorry." He says, and you sigh again, a small, crooked smile pulling at your lips.

"It's fine. Take your shower, mister, and maybe by the time you're done there'll be food."

John's grin is blinding, and you close the door on it, your heart aching slightly.

Sometimes you wish you'd never woken up on Prospit.

When you look at John, and he goes from the goofy, happy kid you remember to this guy you can barely recognize through all the seriousness, it hurts, and you feel like it might be your fault for trying to get them to play the game with you.

When Rose uses dark majyyk, or another dead dave from a doomed timeline shows up; you wish, sometimes, that they'd never met you, 'cause then they'd have been able to live normal lives.

Except, you remind yourself sternly, they wouldn't have. They would have died, just like everyone else back on your Earth. So shoosh. You've got work to do now anyway.

The water in the bathroom turns on as you turn to make your way to the living room, and it brings a slight smile to your face. You couldn’t wait to take your own shower and wash off the lingering scents of Carapacian blood and dirt and sweat.

But first, dead Daves.

Hopefully there wouldn't be too much blood.

A few minutes later, you're gaping at the scene in the living room.

_There is all of the blood._

==>Be the Harry Potter knockoff.

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and there is a high pitched sound going straight through you.

You aren't sure what it is, but it's so, glubbin' high. You're not even sure that you're hearin' it, really, or if it's something that you feel; a high pitched sound that vibrates across your skin and sets your teeth very firmly on edge.

Unbidden, an answering hum rises in your thorax, but you clamp it down. You can't draw attention right now. No one's been paying attention to you, but answerin' that distress call'll get you culled faster'n you could blink.

Instead, you look around the room, tryin' to see who's makin' that gogaweful sound, and your eyes land on one of the humans. The one with the weird, barkbeast ears.

Her eyes are fixed firmly on where the others have piled up the corpses of the Knight of Time, and you know that that sound is comin' from her.

So too, apparently, does Feferi, if the way she's bee-linin' towards the bark-beast girl is any indication.

You hunch down smaller, and glare at the screen of the husktop you've got in your lap.

You're not doin' anythin' on it, it's just there so that if anyone looks like they're about to catch you lookin' at them, you have somethin' to look distracted by.

You've been hidin' in this corner, tryin' not to draw any attention to yourself since the Space Witch brought you all to this weird ass hive and dumped you all in a room together. You can't draw attention to yourself, or you'll get culled before you can blink.

Even you can admit that you probably'd deserve it, especially comin' from Fef or Kan.

Still, you spent a long time in the dream bubbles, and their alternate selves spent so long hunting you down and killin' you whenever they found you that you've got a feel for what they're lookin' for. As long as you can avoid doin' anythin' that draws their attention to you, you'll be fine.

Probably.

So you stayed in your corner, body tight as a string, as Gamzee lost it, then as the human adult lost it, and then as the other red blooded mutant seemed to lose it, and now you're havin' to hold yourself back from the most heart breakin' distress call you ever did hear.

Fuck.

There aint nothin' you can do here.

There's no reason for you to be here.

You slam the husktop shut, slide it into your sylladex, and ghost around the edges of the room until you can slip, unnoticed, out the door.

All that runnin' and hidin' from Fef and Kan did you some good at least. You're the stealthiest seatroll that ever fuckin' lived, now.

You hope.

Terezi could probably track you, if she wanted. But when you duck into an alcove holding a weird metal human shaped thing and watch the doors, no one appears, and you relax. You aren't bein' followed.

You ghost down the hallway, idly peeking into the rooms you pass and grateful that most of the internal illumination devices are off. Your bioluminescence is enough for you to see by, and somethin' about the human lights was givin' you a headache back in the big room.

You pull your cloak out of where you'd hidden it in your sylladex and wrap it around you.

It'd hide your luminescence from anyone coming up behind you; make it harder for them to hit you before you knew they were there.

You pass more rooms, dark and empty, and you start wonderin' if you should maybe lay claim to one of 'em before anyone else can. You shrug the thought off. Better to wait until everyone else's chosen a room, then pick one far enough away that you can set traps to let you know if anyone's comin'.

There's light shinin' from under one of the doors, and the smell of somethin' sweet in the air. You'd been following the scent and hadn't even noticed, you realize, and you growl at that thought.

A trap.

You've been trapped, and now Feferi and Kanaya are goin' to pop up from around the corner and cull you and you aint gonna come back this time.

You practically fly into the closest empty room, and close the door most of the way, peering out through the crack between door and jam.

Nothing happens. No other trolls appear. The door into the lit room doesn't open.

Your nerves sing with tension, and you wait.

After a few tense minutes, you relax a little. Fef isn't patient. Neither is Kan. This isn't a trap.

You hope.

(Besides, isn’t Fef back in the big room you’d left? So that just leaves Kan, and even if she is more patient, she’d have known where you were and come for you after you hid.)

You ease the door open, and slip across and down the hallway to listen at the door.

The sweet smell is stronger here, and you can hear voices. They've got a rounder sound to them than the other humans, but without the subvocal hums or clicks that other trolls have, so it's probably the other adult humans.

You shudder slightly. Adults. Jegus.

"-not condone the sort of behaviour that I witnessed while a guest on Derse." one voice is saying, the voice deep and smooth. It makes you think of sky whalebeast song, and you shudder slightly.

"Well I'm staying if Rose is." the second voice is higher, like one of the smaller whalebeasts, but no less smooth than the first. "I don't think I've ever seen her so happy. I'm not going to run the risk of ruining that. Besides. I've never really been able to connect with her. Maybe now I can."

"I must admit," a third voice, virtually identical to the first, but with a slight undertone that you can't quite place, "John seems to have come into his own, and I don't think I could be prouder."

"Jane is just a child." the first voice again, "I cannot allow her to continue to consort with beings and people that will lead her even further astray."

The adult wants to take one of the god tiers away? And do what? You're confused. It sounds almost like it's actin' like her moirail; like it's tryin' to protect her, but from what?  
There's nothin' around here that could really hurt a god tier. And most everyone played the game together. Hell, the humans, they won the game together.

And the humans seem like they're against people gettin' culled, so the more of them there are around, the less likely you are to wind up dead. More information is needed, but it seems like the other two adults aren't goin' to contradict the first one, and the voices fall silent.

You slip further down the hall, and through another door into an empty room, settle in a corner with a good view of the door, and tap the side of your glasses to open up Trollian.

\--caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:52--

CA: kar.

CA: hey kar.

CA: how do wwe keep the adults from makin' off with any of the humans

CG: ERIDAN. WHAT THE BLISTERING BULGESNIFFING FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

CA: i wwas wwanderin around, tryin to stay out of fefs and kans wway and i ovverheard the adults talkin

CA: it sounded like one of them wwas talkin about takin one of the humans awway somewwhere

CA: howw do wwe stop it

CG: WHY DO YOU CARE? AND WHICH HUMAN?

CA: because fef and kan spent the whole time i wwas in the dream bubbles huntin me dowwn and killin me

CA: ovver and ovver and ovver

CA: the humans dont seem to like killin

CA: more humans means less chance i end up dead

CA: dont know wwhich human was talkin.

CG: OF COURSE IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE HUMAN, OR THE REST OF US. AT LEAST YOU'VE FINALLY FIGURED OUT ENLIGHTENED SELF INTEREST.

CG:AND I MEANT WHICH HUMAN WERE THEY SPEAKING ABOUT, NOOKSTAIN.

CA: oh

CA: one a the females i think

CA: jean or wwatevver.

CG: YOU MEAN JANE. FUCK. ALL RIGHT, I'LL TALK TO HER. GOOD WORK OR SOMETHING.

CG: GO BACK TO DOING WHATEVER IT WAS YOU WERE DOING.

CG: DON'T FUCKING KILL ANYBODY.

\--CG has ceased trolling CA--

CA: i wwasnt goin to

\--CA has ceased trolling CG--

==>John; enjoy your shower.

Oh hells yes.

There is literally nothing better than a real, actual hot shower.

You can practically feel all the stress and dirt and just everything being washed away by the hot water.

You definitely aren't thinking about how part of that everything is your own blood from where your best bro's Bro gutted you ten minutes ago.

Nope! Not thinking about it! That is a thing that is not being thought about, ever!

Shit.

You're thinking about it.

Fuck.

You shudder, hard, at the phantom feeling of smooth, icy steel ripping through you.

No. You're fine. You came back. It's fine. Fuck, it wasn't that much worse than when Bec Noir killed you the first time.

You glance down at your stomach, just to be sure.

Yup.

Nothing but smooth, unmarked skin. No guts or blood here!

You definitely don't see the pinkish tint in the water going down the drain.

Mentally, you smack yourself out of it. You're fine. It wasn't Heroic or Just. Bro just got the wrong impression. He didn't mean to. You're fine, and you're standing under an absolutely delicious spray of hot water, and you have other things you could be thinking about!

Like, ummm... Oh! Right! The trolls earlier! They were all human when they woke up. And Rose turned into a troll, and then back into a human.

She was kind of pretty as a troll, actually...

Nope! Not thinking about that either!

But, did Rose turning into a troll mean that all of the human players could? Or was it a thing she could do because of her contact with the Horrorterrors?

You wrack your brain as you scrub your hair, but can't think of any reason why the horrorterrors would give Rose the ability to turn into a troll.

Unless they wanted her to be able to understand her girlfriend better? Maybe?

You pause to consider that thought, then brush it off, your snort of amusement echoing around the tiled room.

So... did that mean that maybe all of the players could?

You frown thoughtfully.

That'd be pretty cool, actually. You wonder if you could just...

It feels like cross between crossing your eyes, flicking a mental switch, and holding your breath almost too long, but suddenly, something has changed.

Actually, everything has changed, and hopy CRAP this water is hot!

Yelping, you fumble for the faucet and turn the water down as far as it'll go.

You let the icy water soothe away the stinging sensation from the too-hot water, then inch it up again until it's back to 'pleasantly warm' rather than 'hot as the lava from LOHAC'.

It's only once you've taken care of that pressing concern that you actually manage to get a good look at your hands.

They look almost exactly the same; you expected the grey skin, and the orange, clawlike nails, but, when you go to look at the (your) fingernails more closely, (with your fingertips, rather than your eyes. Farsightedness is so annoying!) they feel more like actual claws.

They're harder and thicker than any human fingernail you've ever felt before (not that that's very many, but still!), and the edges and tips feel like something a cat might have. Non-retractable, of course, but sharp as hell.

Now you're curious, and you're mostly clean anyway, so you shut the water off, and hop out of the tub.

The breeze still comes to you easily like this, and you use it to clear the steam from the air, swirling warm air currents around so that the condensation on the full length mirror hanging on the back of the door clears away quickly.

As soon as it's clear enough, you grab your glasses, jam them on your face (and wince; your head is shaped slightly differently now, so the earpieces are pressing just a little too firmly on the sides of your head) and peer into the mirror.

Your glasses promptly fog up.

Irritation surges through you, and you reach up and tug your glasses free, tossing them into the sink with a clatter that makes you wince at the sharpness.

Wait.

Why are you getting mad about this? Your glasses _always_ fog up when you first get out of the shower. It's normal.

Sure, it's a little annoying, but you can still sort of see yourself in the mirror without them.

Just relax.

You take a deep breath, then let it out slowly and begin to examine your blurry reflection in the mirror.

The first thing you see is the horns, just as candy corn colored as the horns of every other troll you've seen, but they look huge on your head. Not as big as the troll with the bull horns, but definitely larger than Karkat's nubs. They're thick, but graceful, flowing slightly up and to the sides, then dipping down so that they're level with your ears and sweeping backwards. The points don't reach past the back of your head, which is awesome, 'cause if they did you'd have one hell of a time trying to get a shirt on over them. Actually, you're not sure you could get a shirt on over them anyway.

Cautiously, you run your fingers down the left horn. It's nothing special, just a hard, bony protrusion. You'd thought that maybe the different colors might feel different, but they don't. It's all smooth and slightly warm.

You follow the horn down into your hair and feel around the base of it. Oh. Oh that feels _good_. Yes. You can keep doing that. You are never, ever going to stop. You barely notice that you've started purring, a soft thrumming sound from deep in your chest that you decide to ignore, even as you keep exploring the base of the horn. It feels so good. Relaxing. Like when you'd gone to get a haircut, and they'd washed your hair first, with warm water, and nice smelling shampoo, and fingers delicately rubbing at your scalp. It makes you want to melt into a puddle and never ever stop.

Reluctantly, you stop anyway. You're still curious about the rest of the troll body you're in.

Nose, check. It's a little flatter than you're used to, and it reminds you a little bit of a rabbit's nose in the shape, but it's still recognizably your nose.

You have eyes too, the same grey on yellow that the others have, so you ignore them in favor of grinning broadly at the mirror and examining your new teeth.

Hopy fuck those look sharp.

You've seen Terezi smile before, like a shark that's scented blood, but damn! You never expected to see your own smile look almost as dangerous as hers.

You think part of how dangerous her smile seems is because of the dark, gleeful _intent_ she puts behind it, but you aren't sure.

Two arms, check.

Two hands, check.

Claws? Already examined.

Chest, check, but no nipples. Weird. And what are these weird blue things along your ribs? They feel like calluses; you can't feel yourself touching them, but you can feel them, and there's two of them, one on each side of your torso.

You make a mental note to ask Rose if she knows, since she's dating Kanaya, and keep examining yourself.

No bellybutton either, double weird.

Wait... what the hell? What is _that_?

==> Leave John to his explorations. Be someone else.

You would _love_ to be someone else. Unfortunately, you're stuck being Karkat Vantas, no matter how much it fucking sucks.

Still, it sucks marginally less, since you recently woke up with your hand reattached to your wrist. Actually, the fact that you woke up at all makes it suck less.

Except you woke up in a puddle of your own blood, with your husktop chirping at you from your sylladex.

Bluh.

Assholes couldn’t be bothered to fucking move you.

Fuckwits.

You sit up and don't bother moving yourself. It'll just make a bigger mess that you'll have to figure out how to clean up later if you do.

Glancing around the room, you try to get an idea of who's messaging you.

Aranea, Vriska and the Bro human are passed out, and it looks like someone grabbed them some respite cushions. Rose, Jade, Feferi, Aradia, Jane and Jake are standing a few feet from a pile of dead daves, (and that thought doesn't make your stomach turn. It _doesn't._ ) and it looks like they're trying to figure out what to do with them. You can hear Aradia chirping about corpse parties from here. Ugh.

Sollux has _somehow_ managed to get his apiculture network set up in one corner of the room, and he's alternating between typing furiously and glaring daggers over at where the Roxy human is sitting, her own husktop open in her lap.

Each glare is met with a fierce grin, and some even fiercer typing, and you _swear to everything that might be hopy you cannot deal with an interspecies kismesis._

Especially not between those two.

Equius and Nepeta are basically sitting on Nepeta's dancestor in a pile of broken robot parts, (not your business, you _do not want to know_ ). Kankri is talking, low voiced, fast and irritated looking to a bored looking Meenah.

Everywhere you look, there are trolls or humans doing their own thing, but none of them look like they're particularly interested in you.

You sigh, and pull out your husktop.

Because why not? Might as well get blood all over this thing, too. Give yourself something else to have to clean.

You almost don't answer when you see who's trolling you, but the third message keeps you from closing the window.

By the time you've finished the conversation, slapped your husktop shut and shoved it back into your sylladex, you're seething.

You let that carry you over to where Jane is standing and drag her away from the conversation, ignoring her confusion until you're standing just outside the common block door.

"What," Jane snaps, shaking your hand off of her sleeve, "do you want? This is a fine thank you for reattaching your hand! I suppose I'll get even more thoroughly manhandled if I should ever have to revive you!"

Your eyes widen, and you facepalm. Right. You forgot.

"Sorry." you mutter, glancing at the closed door. "And thanks. But you've got different problems, so shut your gaping protein chute and listen for a minute."

It only takes a couple of minutes to fill her in on what Eridan had overheard, but by the time you'd finished, and answered her questions, (no, you hadn't heard this yourself. No, there was no proof. Yes, if she wanted to leave she could. Though that was a _monumentally_ stupid fucking idea.) her lips were pressed firmly together and her eyes were narrowed in irritation.

"Thank you for informing me. I have no real desire to leave, if only because I do not believe I _could_ go back to a normal life now. I enjoy being the Maid of Life far too much to hide it. I shall handle it if my father tries to bring it up."

And with that, she turns, yanks the door open, and vanishes back into the block.

You follow her back in just in time to see Aradia, Jake and all of the dead daves vanish in a flare of green light orchestrated by Jade, who spots you and comes over.

"They went to burn the bodies." Jade says, "I'll take them food when it's ready, but we really need to get the blood cleaned up before any of the adults come back."

You frown, and Jade elaborates. "I don't think they really know what we've been doing. I mean, Rose's mom and John's dad were there for a little bit, but I don't think they know that this," she waves at the blood everywhere, "is a thing that happened at all. I um… don’t really want to tell them, either. Parents can get weird about their kids getting hurt, I think, and I don’t want John and Rose or anyone else to have to leave."

Your shoulders slump.

"Shit. All right. Where can we get towels and bowls of water around here?"

"Oh!" Jade grins at you, and there's a series of green flashes that leave you blinking away spots.

When you can finally see again, there are three huge metal bowls of steaming water, and a small pile of rags.

"Thanks so much Karkat! I really appreciate you doing this! I've gotta go back before the 'rents get suspicious, byeee!"

Another eruption of green light leaves you standing next to the cleaning supplies by yourself.

You stare, for a moment, at the empty space where Jade had been standing, then realize that she just fucked off and left you to clean up this entire gogforsaken mess on your own.

"HARLEY YOU MISERABLE _BITCH_!"

You hope she can hear your tirade from wherever the fuck she went. This time you’re getting fucking creative.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cleaning, baths, and hacking, oh my!

==>John; pretend that never happened.

You left the bathroom behind a couple of seconds ago, fully dressed in the magicalness that is the god tier pajamas, and back in your human form, and resolving to _never ever_ think about what you just discovered _ever again_.

Seriously though. The pajamas. They are totally magical. Maybe even majykal. The bloodstains and cuts had vanished, leaving them looking brand new, so you'd pulled them on, eager to get out of the suddenly too-warm bathroom.

Now, you're following the sound of shouting back to where you think the others are, and as you get closer, the words you start to make out make you grin, then laugh.

Karkat is _pissed_.

You pick your feet up off the ground, and let the Breeze carry you back down the empty halls to the living room. Karkat's shouting is much louder from behind the door, and you try to smother your grin before you open the door.

"-FESTERING SCREECHBEAST'S ASSHOLE, I SWEAR TO GOG!"

He's facing away from you, and it's too perfect. You don't even try to keep yourself from sneaking up behind him, ignoring the looks of amusement that you're getting from your fellow humans.

Just.. a little... closer... Now!

You swoop in, catching Karkat with his arms to his sides and pinning them so that he can't accidentally eviscerate you with his claws, and swing him around, laughing like a maniac as he splutters and struggles to free himself.

"Karkat!" You cheer, "Thanks for leading me back! I would have been lost forever if I didn't hear you shouting!"

Karkat stiffens, then he starts flailing, kicking backwards and trying to land a hit on your shins. "JOHN YOU FUCKFACE, PUT ME DOWN!"

You grin, squeezing once, then plopping your friend onto the ground and ducking his automatic swipe as he spins in place to glare at you.

You bounce over to the pile of rags you saw sitting next to some bowls of water and grab one.

"So, we're cleaning this up, right? Where did you want to get started?"

For a moment he stares at you, his mouth hanging open, then;

"Arrgh! Fine! You start over there, on that wall, I'll get the one over there." one grey finger directs you to the nearest wall as he stomps over to grab his own rag, and you salute him, then grab one of the bowls and head over to get to work.

You're humming tunelessly when Jane wanders over, grabs a rag, and starts to help, and somehow that's like a signal, because a couple of minutes later, one of the alpha trolls has grabbed their own rag and started in on the larger pool of blood where you'd been gutted. Single, then in pairs, more people wander over, grab their own rags, and start working on getting all of the blood off the walls and floor, until there's three people to a bowl, no more rags left, and it's just... nice.

Terezi is calling instruction to you all from where she's sitting on the floor, Dave's head (still attached to his body, thankfully,) in her lap, and Karkat is hissing back at her like an offended cat.

Rose, Kanaya, and another troll girl you don't recognize are working on the same puddle, chatting softly, while nearby another troll girl is shoving one of the troll guys down and into the largest puddle, laughing victoriously as he whines about the state of his previously pristine white shirt.

You grin. This is really nice.

There's laughter, and teasing, and some of it might be meaner than you'd like, and there's not enough supplies (or room) for everyone to help, but it's just... really great. It feels homey.

It doesn't take long before Rose declares that the room looks as clean as you're going to get it, and the water in the bowls is stained red.

"C'mon," you tell Karkat, "We can dump this out in the bathroom, and I'll take the bowls back to Jade."

"Good." he grumbles, grabbing his own bowl, "I want to get this crap out from under my claws."

There's a chorus of assent at that, and you find yourself leading a procession back to the bathroom Jade had shown you.

The bowls are dumped out in the tub and rinsed, then rinsed again as people scrub their hands; trying to get blood and viscera out from under fingernails or claws.

You take your time with the rags, but hot water doesn't really seem to be getting the stains out, and when Rose sees the steam from the water, she hip checks you out of the way, switches the water over to as cold as it goes, and starts working what can only be black majyyk on them, since the stains start to fade almost immediately.

You stare, and her lips twitch into a small smile at the look on your face before she hands you the bowls and shoos you out of the bathroom.

When you get back to the living room, it's full of good smells, and someone obviously had the presence of mind to cover up the darker spots on the wood floor with blankets and cushions, because the table they'd been on was covered in plates and bowls of food, and people were hanging out on piles of cushions with plates of food.

You're relieved to see Dave up and about, looking not too much worse for the wear, and you grin sheepishly at him before surveying the spread.

It looks like the trolls are sticking pretty much exclusively to anything meat or cake, so you just grab yourself some of the other stuff and sit down to enjoy your meal.

A moment later, your dad sits down next to you.

"So what was the ruckus earlier about?" He asks casually, and you choke.

==> Be completely unflappable.

"I didn't think it was possible for there to be a worse liar than English." you muse out loud, your eyes, hidden behind your pointy shades, fixed on the blue figure currently hacking rice out of his lungs while his father pats him heavily on the back.

"Yeah, well. That's Egbert for you." Dave says, leaning back against the couch his bro (you? your dimensional twin?) had been returned to.

A thick blanket covers any hint of blood that might have landed on Bro (Dirk, you, _not you_.), and, to all intents and purposes, he looks asleep.

As though he'd never moved.

You aren't sure whether to be impressed by his murderous rampage, or scornful that he so obviously lost his cool.

You suppose you'll have to settle for ambivalence.

"He can keep a secret, but the dude can't lie for shit." Dave says, and you nod, but say nothing.

There's nothing else that needs to be said.

A fact is a fact.

Kind of like the fact that, no matter what sort of front they’re putting up for the others, you can tell that Dave and, well, Dave-with-wings still aren’t comfortable with each other. Given the fact that Dave-with-wings has been shooting some _really obvious_ looks over at where you and Dave-without-wings are sitting; like he wants to come over, and check on Dave-without-wings and Bro-Dirk (‘cause he’s not your bro, nope. That title is for _your_ Dave, and your Dave alone.) but he’s been keeping his distance.

Also, the way the Dave next to you keeps glancing over at him, like he’s not sure if he should be doing something or not? Kind of a giveaway.

Surprisingly, neither of the younger Daves has anywhere near as good of a poker face as you’d thought he/they might.

Granted, you’re basing your assumption off their older dimensional twin, but, well, they are sort of the same person?

The Dave next to you twitches slightly, and you amend that thought.

They are not the same person.

It’s probably not a good idea to think they are.

==> Days in the future (but not many.)

It's been two days since Aranea, Vriska, and the doctorterrorist type players managed to pry every single thread of Caliborn's influence out of everyone's heads.

Two days since Gamzee and Kurloz had done their best to either kill you all, or encourage you to kill each other.

Two days since Gamzee had been released from whatever the fuck it was Aranea and Vriska had done to keep him from using his chucklevoodoos and promptly vanished.

After the first night, everyone spread out through the enormous hive, claiming different blocks for themselves, even though they still spent a lot of time in the common areas.

Everyone except for Gamzee. You hadn't seen him once in the last two days.

Which is why you are here, prowling up through the hallways of the mainfloor, trying to catch any sign of Gamzee.

Because fuck it. You might not be moirails anymore, but he was your friend before that. You still _care_ , dammit!

Except you're not able to find much of anything. It's been too long, and he’s too good at vanishing when he wants to. Fuck.

"Whatcha doing Karkles?"

"Gah!" You jump and spin, then glare at the broad grin on Terezi's face.

"Fuck off, Terezi. I'm busy."

"Awww, I'm hurt Karkles! Really, that wounds me deeply." Her grin is getting wider, and she's starting to tap her cane in front of her. Up and down, up and down, tap, tap, tap.

Fuck. She knows something's up. She's always been good at seeing through hoofbeast shit.

Fuuuuuuck.

"Too bad it isn't fatal." You snap, and turn to walk away.

"I know where he is." Terezi's voice stops you in your tracks, and you cringe internally.

Dammit.

"Where who is?"

Dammit dammit dammit. That did not at all come out how you wanted it to sound, and you know she caught the hope in your voice.

"You know who I'm talking about, Karkles." tap, tap, tap, goes her cane. "He's been hiding in his respite block this whoooole time, and now you want to go check on him like a good moirail."  
"Ex-moirail." You correct sharply, and you're so tense you're surprised that you aren't about to snap in half.

Terezi snickers quietly, but says nothing about your defensiveness.

After nothing but the incessant tapping of her cane for _way too fucking long_ , you start walking again. You're probably going to have to search the whole damn hive for that asshole, so you might as well get started now.

"He's in one of the rooms looking over the ocean on the twelfth floor." Terezi calls after you, and, for a fucking miracle, she's stopped tapping her cane. "Be careful, Karkat."

You make a noise of acknowledgement at her, and hurry to the transportalizer.

Harley's hive is fucking huge, which is both good, and bad.

Good, because it lets the other trolls feel like they can establish territory(which they have), and bad, because it means that if someone wants to vanish, they can at least make it _really fucking hard_ for anyone else to find them.

The transportalizer won't take you to the twelfth floor, which means that grubfucking waste of air has blocked it with something, so you head to the eleventh floor instead and start climbing the stairs.

You are going to kill Gamzee for this.

Only not really, because you're having a hard enough time keeping Feferi from killing Eridan, and Damara from killing Meenah, and if you start killing people, then all your efforts to keep people alive go straight down the waste water disposal chute.

Still, there's nothing that says you can't yell at him until he sees sense.

Except for the thermal hull on the transportalizer platform, the twelfth floor looks as empty as every other unused floor in the hive, and you shiver. This isn't right. There's nothing laying claim to the floor, or even just one of the hallways. No personal items left laying around, no signs, nothing.

If Terezi hadn't said that he was here, you'd be on your way to check another floor already.

But she did, so you pick one of the four hallways that lead out of this floor's common block and start opening doors.

By the fourth door, you're muttering impreciations under your breath.

By the middle of the second hallway, you're full on ranting, the hot satisfaction that getting up a really good head of steam gives you building up in your chest as you slam into empty blocks, look around, and slam out of them again.

It's not until three quarters of the way down the third hallway that you find a door that won't open, and you pound on it.

"Gamzee! You better still be a-fucking-live in there you nooksniffing piece of shit!"

Nothing.

No movement, no sound, it's like the room is as empty as all the others, except for the fact that it's locked from the inside.

Worry winds its way around your posture pole, and your stomach clenches.

"Gamzee?"

Still nothing.

"Gamzee I swear, if you don't open this door I will tear it off of its motherfucking swing enablers and cram it so far up your spinal crevice that you'll be tasting wood for sweeps!"

You hear a grand total of fuck all from the room, and bare your teeth. Fine. If this fuckass wants you to break into his gogdamned respite block, then you will fucking oblige.

You take a couple of steps back, then lift your leg and kick as hard as you can right next to the door knob.

The door rattles, and wood splinters ominously, but it stays shut, and you growl, low and furious, before raising your strut pod to try again.

Something moves in the block, and you pause.

"Gamzee?"

More silence, but there's a rattling behind the door, and then the lock clicks and the door creaks open.

You waste absolutely no time in trying to take a look at him; just shove your way into the block, slam the door shut, and lock it behind you.

"It fucking took you long enough, asshole." You snarl, and only then do you let yourself look at your ex-moirail.

He looks absolutely horrible.

Not just because you can see the huge, dark rings around his eyes. Not just because he's in the ridiculous human body that's supposed to be the human version of himself. Not just because unless he had food in his sylladex, he hasn't eaten anything since he vanished, or because of the absolutely devastating look of guilt on his face, or the dried blood, human and troll, crusting his shirt, or the way his hair is a tangled, knotted, mess, or that his face is completely devoid of his usual paint.

No. Not just because of any of those things individually.

Taken individually, you'd feel a rush of pity, and the urge to take care of him.

All those things together make you an incoherent, panicking, mess.

"Gamzee? What...?" You can't even speak, but that complete moron has the gall to shuffle awkwardly where he's standing, twisting his dull, human fingers in the bottom of his shirt.

"Hey Karbro." his voice is a harsh croak; it sounds like he's swallowed half a desert, and all that does is piss you off.

"Don't you 'hey Karbro' me!" You snap, and instantly regret it when he flinches minutely, but you barrel on. "What the fuck is going on? What happened to you? Why the hell are you locked up here? And why are you in your human skin?"

"Can't be getting my motherfucking hurt on with anyone else as a humie." Gamzee rasps, leaning back against the wall, then sliding down it to sit, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

You swear, then decaptchalogue a bottle of water, crack it open and go to hand it to him.

He stares at it, then takes it, slowly, with one shaking hand.

It takes him a couple of tries to get it to his mouth, and he spills a good deal of it onto himself, but he does manage to take a couple of sips before he sets it down next to himself and leans his head back against the wall.

His throat is exposed. You can't... he isn't... this is...

You growl, and do your best to ignore it. This is wrong. You need to figure out what's going through his head.

"Now." You say, sitting down across from him. "Explain. What the nookmunching fuck is going on?"

"Can't get my hurt on with anybody else as a humie." he says again, and this time his voice sounds a little better. "Got no motherfucking chucklevoodoos all up in my motherfucking head. Gotta stay away from Karbro, and Kittysis an' all the motherfucking rest of 'em, or else the motherfucking voices-" his voice cracks, and before you can think, you're at his side, one arm around his shoulders, and coaxing him to drink some more of the water.

"The motherfuckin voices," he says, "of the mother. _Fucking._ Mirthful messiahs. Talking me in motherfucking circles." his voice is tight, and his hands have clenched into fists, and you, carefully, start to stroke his hair.

"Aint got no reason to stick around." he says hoarsly, "but when a motherfucker tried to up and leave, he just came back."

He looks at you out of the corner of one eye and you freeze at the sight of deep purple; the same color as his blood.

"Gamzee, are you... did you already moult?"

He huffs a small laugh, and his head lolls lazily from one side to the other, "Nah. Aint had no motherfuckin time to be all up an' makin' myself a nice little cocoon. Jus' been sittin’ up in here, trying to keep my motherfuckin best friend safe."

You sigh, and lean your forehead against his head. He's not making any sense, and all you can think to do about it is redirect.

"Good job, Gamzee." You say tiredly, "Everyone's safe. We're all fine. Well, all of us except you, you complete moron, but now we're going to get you into the closest ablution trap, clean you up, and then get you something to eat before you starve to death like the pan addled idiot you are." and get someone to take a look inside his head, you add silently. Mirthful messiahs your well shaped ass. Someone is still fucking with his pan.

He hums an acknowledgment, but makes no effort to move, so you stand and haul him up with you, pulling his closest arm over your shoulder, and tossing your arm around his waist to keep him standing.

Fuck.

How can someone made of skin and fucking bone be so gogdamned heavy?

It doesn't help that he's taller than you, too, but you manage to keep the both of you upright as you unlock the door and yank it open.

Fresher air practically slaps you in the face, and you inhale deeply. You hadn't realized just how stagnant the air in Gamzee's respite block was, but now that you've noticed, you want out.

"C'mon." You grunt, and haul your ex-moirail's mostly dead weight out of the room.

"Where's the ablution block for this floor?"

Gamzee doesn't say anything, but does tug you slightly back towards the main block, and the two of you stagger up the hallway, then over towards the only hall you hadn't checked yet.

Of course.

He directs you to the first door in the hallway, and you fumble the door open, then freeze, staring at what has to be the scene of the most violent, bloody massacre in history.

There's purple and red everywhere, and the scent of blood thick in the air, and you're not screaming, you're _not_ , you are choking back all of the sounds your voice is trying to make as you look wildly between the ablution block and Gamzee.

"G-gamzee? What the fuck?"

His eyes are half lidded, and his face is dangerously blank, and all you can think is _'ohshitohshitohshit he's lost it again, he's fucking started killing people again and now I'm gonna die oh fuck oh fuck.'_

"Like I said." Gamzee rasps, "This motherfucker up and tried to leave. But it all didn't work, and I motherfucking came back."

You don't get it for a moment, then something in his phrasing, and the only two colors splattered all over the ablution block click in your head, and you do.

_And you have never been more angry in your life._

"Fuck." you haul Gamzee back out of the doorway, and slam it shut.

It doesn't matter how heavy he is now. Now you're pissed, and your anger is fueling your strength as you haul him up the flight of stairs, then onto the transportalizer to go to your floor instead.

"You," you inform him, as you struggle down the hall you'd claimed for yourself, "are staying with me. I don't care if you want to or not. If you're going to be so _pan meltingly retarded_ that you try to kill yourself, then you don't get choices anymore."

"Had to try." Gamzee says, matter-of-factly, "Had to keep you an' Kittysis an' Tavbro safe."

"We are safe, you absolute fuckwit!" You spit, slamming open the door to your own ablution block and troll-handling Gamzee inside.

You let him slide down to sit on the lid of the load gaper, then reach over, plug the waste water disposal chute in the ablution trap, and turn on the water before turning back to Gamzee.

"Strip." You tell him, trying to ignore the blood rushing to your cheeks.

Gamzee's lips twitch into a crooked smile, and he starts trying to struggle out of his shirt.

You try not to watch, but when almost a full minute passes and he's still stuck inside it, you sigh and turn to help.

"Dear sweet wiggler troll Jegus Gamzee, you really are completely fucking useless." you mutter, gently untangling him from the fabric and tossing it over behind the door.

When you turn back to look at him, he's staring at you, an unreadable expression on his face, and you shift, slightly uncomfortable.

You know you're pushing the boundaries of friendship.

You know that the two of you aren't moirails anymore.

It's just...

You sigh, and run one hand down your face.

"Can you at least manage the rest of it by yourself?" You ask, checking the water level absently, and Gamzee nods.

"Good. I'll be right back."

It doesn't take you long to get some clean towels; the linen closet is basically right next door to the ablution block, but by the time you get back, Gamzee'd already turned the water off and was sitting, thin and miserable looking in the half full ablution trap, shivering slightly.

You scowl, but force yourself to ignore it. Gamzee's a big troll. He can handle himself.

"Here." You say, and toss him an ablution rag, setting three other towels, huge and thick and fluffy, on the counter. "I'll be outside if you need anything."

You close the door behind you, then step to the side, lean against the wall and slide down to sit on the floor.

Fuck. You aren't sure what you were hoping to find, but you know that it was supposed to be better than what you actually found.

Gamzee seems like even more of a mess now, and you just...

He wasn't a good moirail. You can't do that again. You can't be responsible for someone else's emotional well being when you aren't getting the support you need.

You are going to let him clean up. You are going to take him back to the hall you'd claimed. You are going to set him up with a block, help him move his shit out of the dank block he'd chosen, and then you are going to make sure he doesn't try to kill himself again. And that is it.

You are not his moirail. And you are never going to be his moirail again.

You barely notice that your hands have tangled themselves in your hair until the faint splashing sounds in the bathroom pauses and Gamzee's voice breaks you out of your reverie.

"Best friend?"

"Yeah?" your voice isn't hoarse. You are not at the edge of frustrated tears. You're just thirsty.

"You still there?"

You roll your eyes so hard that you feel something strain.

"Grubfucking _empress_. Yes Gamzee, I'm still fucking here. What the hell do you want?"

"Just makin' sure a brother aint all gone and disappeared on me." His voice sounds subdued, and you sigh, scrubbing your face with your hands.

"I'm still here." You repeat, then, because you can't think of anything else to do (you are not going to sit in there while he cleans himself), you keep talking.

"Lalonde and Sollux, not the Lalonde you know, the other one. Roxy. She's a hacker. Her and Sollux worked out where the videos of us came from. Or where they were uploaded from, at least. Some shithole called Hustom, or Hostum. Whatever. I think they're full blown Kismesis by now. It's been nothing but glaring and typing and Sollux swearing at her while she laughs. It's driving me fucking insane."

There's a soft huff from inside the ablution block that might be a laugh, so you carry on.

"Latula, Terezi's dancestor? Thinks that with Terezi and Jane's help they can put Mitunas think sponge back into something resembling working order, so that's good, I guess. Unless he ends up being the second coming of Sollux. If that happens, I will throw myself off the gogdamn roof, I swear.

"AND THEN!" you say dramatically, letting yourself really get into the flow, "There's Eridan _fucking_ Ampora. He's convinced that Feferi and Kanaya are going to murder him on sight, so he's been basically living in the forest like some kind of demented howlbeast for the last couple of days. I don't even want to know where he's sleeping.

"He's probably right though; about Feferi, at least. I swear I caught her sharpening her 2x3dent and talking to Meenah about some sort of hunting competition."

You shudder slightly. "And that is one of the most unholy fucking combinations ever."

"What is, Karbro?" Gamzee's voice sounds marginally better, and you find yourself relaxing a little bit as you reply.

"Meenah and Feferi. They're polar fucking opposites, but they get along like a hive on fucking _fire_. It's terrifying. Meenah'll be talking about treasure or hunting, or just generally being like a younger, less psychotic version of the Fish Bitch herself, and Feferi'll start asking questions about something, or she'll start disagreeing with Meenah about whatever Meenah was talking about, and then _Kankri_ will show up out of fucking _nowhere_ and start harping on about sentient rights, or ownership, or what the _fuck_ ever, because he always has an opinion about _everything_ , and suddenly Feferi's in the middle mediating, and you'd _swear_ that she's auspiticizing, but they all swear up and down that there's no pitch or ashen feelings involved, and it's _so fucking unnerving._ "

There's more laughter, low and genuine, coming from the ablution block, and you're oddly pleased by it, even as you protest.

"It's not funny Gamzee! I swear to gog, if those two had ruled together? We would never have had a bulgelicking _chance_. It would have been, ‘Oh hey, look, it's Their Imperious Condescencions, better bend over and kiss your spinal crack goodbye!’

"And they disagree about practically everything! It's ridiculous! They should hate each other! But they're best fucking friends!"

He's laughing harder now, and you don't even try to keep the small smile off your face as you keep rambling.

"And don't even get me started on the adults. Two of them are fucking identical, the adult Strider glares at anyone who gets within two feet of the younger Striders, any of them, and don't even ask me how he glares, because, suprise suprise, he never fucking takes off his gogdamn sunglasses. And then there's the female! I don't even care how many times she says it's fine, I completely, totally, categorically refuse to call her Momlonde. Or Mom. She is not my fucking lusus. And she keeps. Asking. Questions.

"And they aren't even questions we can answer! I mean, Kanaya could answer some of them, but she's a jade blood. She was raised to know those things. No one else cares about egg mortality rates or the effect of sunlight on lussi or whether certain blood colors are recessive or dominant in certain gene combinations. And Kanaya can't even answer all of her questions! The woman is insatiable!"

You let the words continue to flow, now fully relaxed back against the wall as you tell Gamzee all about the insanity that seems to come with twenty-four trolls and thirteen humans all living in (relatively) close quarters with one another.

You tell him about Harley's daily grocery runs, facilitated by the use of her teleportation.

You rant about Egbert's (both of them, the older and the younger, they're just as bad as each other and it's ridiculous) attempts to instigate a prank war that ended with John plastered to the ceiling of the common block by black majyyk, and the older Egbert apologizing profusely to the paint-doused and coldly furious Rose.

You tell him how Crocker- fuck it, there's too many doubles for last names any more- _Jane_ , punched Cronus in the face so hard after he came on to her that one of his teeth cracked.

She broke four of the bones in her hand, and Cronus had to be kept from killing her, but she said it was worth it, and the self satisfied grin on her face was matched only by the glee in Latula's smile as she ground Cronus' face into the floor.

You talk and talk and talk about anything that pops into your pan, until, nearly an hour and a half later, the door creaks open and Gamzee looks down on you, dressed once again in his filthy clothes.

You facepalm. "For fucks sake."

==>Sollux; work on figuring things out.

You're grumbling to yourself; little hissing growls and clicks as you sift through the information your search program had returned.

It's so fucking stupid though. You'd had to rework the code a bunch of times, making it more and more specific so that you wouldn't have to even _think_ about all the fanfiction that had apparently been inspired by the 'web series'.

All you wanted to know was what the fuck the human military wanted with you and the others. Which is why you'd made a program to look for every instance or mention of Trolls, Alternia, Beforus, any of your names, Sburb, or Sgrub, and set it running. It was a pain in the ass though, because aparently sex is all these weird ass mammals think about!

And some of the _pairings_!! What is _wrong_ with these people?!

Trollian chimes at you, distracting you from your mental anguish, and you swivel to look at one of the screens not running your search program.

Of course. What the fuck does she want now?

\--tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began trolling twinArmaggedons [TA] at 18:21--

TG: ohhhh soooollluuuuuxxxxx!

TG: gusss what john found!

TG: *guess

TA: a niice biig bottle of fuck off?

TG: nop!

TG: its a SHIP!!!1

TA: good for hiim. egbert found a 2hip iin the miiddle of the fuckiing ocean. iit2 the dii2covery of the century.

TA: now fuck off. iim bu2y.

TG: noooo!

TG: you dont get it! tehers a SHIP! with FLGAS onnit! and a big tower thingy! and a bigass fucking GUN!

TG: *theres

TG: *flags

TA: why the fuck doe2 that matter?

TG: johnnypants said that it was prolly a military shop or somethin.

TG: *shit

TG: *ship

TA: and that clear2 up ab2olutely everythiing.

TA: there2 human miiliitary around. ii2 thii2 the part where iim 2uppo2ed two 2tart paniickiing?

TG: omfg ur such a asshole.

TG: i was tryin' to be all nice and tell you that there was a ship, prolly full of compupterd that might have satelite uplinks 'cause they gotta get orders SOMEHOW and we could maybe POSSIBLY use it to figure out WHY they had such a hardd on to try to come an get u guys when we only just woke up

TG: but youre such a GIGANTIC ASSHOLE that you don't wanna know, so FINE.

TA: oh.

TG: ill just hack it myselff.

TA: biitch, you couldn't hack your way out of a wet paper carryiing deviice iif you had a chaiinsaw.

TG: orly.

TA: ye2 really.

TG: ORLY!?

TA: yeah. really.

TG: fuck you, im amazsing.

TA: 2ure. amaziingly iincompetent.

TG: bet i can get in in under 2 hours.

TA: bet ii can get iin fa2ter than you.

TG: bring it asshole

\--TG has ceased trolling TA--

Your teeth are bared in an unconscious snarl as Lalonde signs off, and you click through a few windows, setting your search program to run in the background.

She thinks she can beat _you_ in a hacking competition? Ha, fat fucking chance.

It takes longer than you like to actually _find_ the damn thing, and you raise your eyebrows. The system actually has some fairly impressive protections. Not anywhere near as good as some of the stuff you'd had to work around to get into a couple of Alternian databases, but still decent.

You grin to yourself.

This'll be a piece of grub.

It takes you an hour and a half to worm your way through the unfamiliar security systems and into the system, and you take a moment to poke around.

The layout is completely different from anything you'd seen before, and you scoff at some of the inefficiencies in the coding.

Shit, you could have done better in your sleep.

You pause for a moment, then amend that thought. It's entirely possible that you have done better in your sleep. There are a couple of projects, you don't actually remember completing.

Now. To make it harder for Lalonde to get in.

All you'll have to do is a couple of tweaks here and...

Code fills your screen, and your eyes widen as you scan it.

"Oh, _thit_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited after I had a chance to talk to someone who was actually ex-navy and could tell me what I was doing wrong. I like the changes much better now.  
> If you want to know what's goin' on in my head with regards to this AU, or just in general, check out my tumblr- kalicofox.tumblr.com  
> I'd love to see you peeps around, and I tend to post snippits that aren't going to make it into any of the main stories there. Also, headcanons. So many headcanons. If you wanna know how I'mmo handle Gamzee, or what I think about troll biology, head there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For future reference;  
> hatfan413 [HF] - Dad Crocker  
> pipefan413 [PF] - Dad Egbert  
> gnostalgicKnitter [GK] - Mom Lalonde  
> testifiedDrift [TD] - Bro Strider  
> timestampedGearhead [TG] - Dave-with-wings (who really needs to pick out his own damn name.)  
> shipwreckSeeker [SS] - Meenah Peixes
> 
> All other handles are already chosen, and will be listed as they're used. Have fun with that.

==>Rose: Be a Seer

You have, since your entrance to Sburb, been a seer. (You may have been one from the beginning. Maybe that’s why you never really doubted Jade when she told you about her visions?) However, you must admit, if only to yourself, that you have not tested your abilities to the limits, and have only a vague idea of what they allow you to do. In fact, you did not actually know you were a seer for some time after entering the game.

Interacting with the Dark Gods of the Furthest Ring seemed like a much easier path, and gave you tangible results much faster than completing the quest line that would have helped you discover and refine your abilities.

You have since come to regret this decision.

However, there is nothing you can do about it now, aside for test, and train and test some more, and that is what you have been doing in your free time since waking up back on earth.

You have discovered that meditation, something you formerly thought of as a load of new age nonsense, actually allows you to enter a state of mind that lets visions flow more freely through you. Directing those visions, or calling up something relevant to what you want to See, on the other hand, is... moderately more difficult.

You suspect that it may have something to do with the Dark Power you can still call upon at will; given that your aspect, Light, is directly opposed to it.

However, you are positive that there is more to the classpects, as Roxy has taken to calling them, than can be seen at first glance. You consider the fact that Jade always seems to know exactly where everything in her immediate vicinity is, without even looking, evidence for this, and you are determined to find out what other abilities being the Seer of Light may have granted you.

Which leads you to this; sitting in Jade's garden atrium, in the light of the setting sun. Allowing the heat and light to sink under your skin and curl around your bones as you attempt to clear your mind and direct your powers to show you something that would be beneficial for you to know at this moment.

Images flick past your minds eye, almost too fast for you to really grasp.

An apple. A bird. A high altitude view of the island from above. A boardroom, with men in suits sitting around a long table. A computer. Empty ocean. Ships, bustling with activity. An alarm. Red flashing lights.

A plume of exhaust following what is obviously some sort of missile. Jade's house.

The flow cuts off, and you find yourself gasping for breath and damp with sweat.

Apparently attempting to See deliberately takes more effort than simply allowing your intuition to guide you. But that is a thought for another time.

At the moment, you have another issue to deal with.

"Jade, John!" You say crisply into thin air, your voice layered with the Gift of Gab so that you may speak directly to your friends.

"What's up Rose?" Jade's voice chirps out of thin air next to your ear, closely followed by John's- "Hi Rose!"

"I believe we have an emergency. There seems to be a missile heading towards Jane's house. There is a high likelihood that it will destroy it completely."

"How long." John's voice is dead serious now.

"Roughly two minutes."

"That's nothing! I can redirect it no problem!" Jade's cheerfulness is muted, but still present, and it makes you smile slightly.

You pause for a moment, something niggling in the back of your mind. "Jade."

"Yeah?"

"I believe the phrase, 'Hoist with their own petard' might be applicable to our benefit in this situation."

"Wha-? Oh."

"Rose? Are you sure??" John's voice is concerned, and right next to you, no longer in your ear. You turn towards him and try to convey your absolute seriousness with your eyes.

"It is-” _willbehasbeen_ “the best option, I think."

For a moment, John says nothing, then he sighs.

"If you're sure."

"I will take full responsibility-" you start to offer, and, "I’ll turn it aro-" John starts to say, but Jade cuts you both off.

"No. I can do it, and we're down to a minute. If they're going this far already, when we haven't even done anything, then they need to be taught a lesson."

"As you say." You agree, and fall silent.

"All right Jade." John says, his voice heavy, "Do it."

Through the windows in the garden atrium, you can see a white plume. For a moment, nothing happens, then the plume stops growing and starts to dissipate. The faint 'boom' of an explosion reaches your ears, or maybe your mind; you aren't sure, and after another moment Jade appears next to you in her customary crackle of green energy.

"Well, that's one ship that won't be firing any more missiles!"

She's trying for cheerful, you know, but her ears are drooping sadly, and her eyes aren't sparkling like they usually do.

Carefully, you reach out and tug her closer to you, folding her into a hug and closing your eyes.

After a moment, her arms come up, and then she's squeezing you, a low miserable whine building in her throat.

Another pair of arms, John's, wrap around the two of you, and you silently curse your own arrogance. Perhaps if you had properly done your quest you would know about things like this long before they happened. In time to avert whatever the root cause of the aggression was. Now, however, you're stuck reacting. Only able to See imminent events.

And Jade and John are paying for it.

You should have gone and blown up the missile yourself.

You could have, probably, with a blast of dark majyyk. It wouldn't have been that hard, maybe.

But now you will never know, and Jade will always know that she is capable of redirecting a missile onto a ship full of people.

Who fired the missile at us first, you remind yourself, and resolve to keep reminding yourself, and reminding Jade and John about it when the guilt of the decision gets to be too much for them.

You let yourself stay there, embracing Jade, and being embraced by John, until Jade pulls away, pulling her glasses off and scrubbing roughly at her eyes with her sleeve.

"So." she says, and you politely ignore the watery quality of her voice, "What now?"

John hesitates for a moment, then scrubs his hand through his hair and huffs a laugh.

"Now, I guess we have a meeting? Or start a memo? Or something? I don't know. I mean, was that a warning shot? Or a 'we want to kill you and everyone you love' kind of thing? I don't know."

"It definitely would have destroyed Jade's house." You say firmly, "And even if all of the god tiers would have revived, that still leaves the trolls who are not god tier, as well as our guardians."

John breathes out sharply, then straightens himself and nods firmly. "Okay. So we should have a meeting. Memo. Thing."

 

==>Eridan; Read the memo

You were in the middle of raidin' the nutrition block, doin' your best to ignore the adult female who was putterin' around the stove when your glasses started flashin' an alert at you and your husktop started to chirp at you from inside your sylladex.

Muttering curses under your breath, you dump your accumulated loot onto the kitchen table and tap the side of your glasses. Nobody hardly talks to you, so if you're gettin' alerts on both ‘a them at once it’s probably somethin' important.

Sure enough, all you can see on your glasses is 'You have been invited to join the new Memo- 'hey we've got a problem' '.

You sigh, decaptchalogue your husktop, and park yourself in a chair. Looks like you ain't gonna get your loot out of the hive any time soon.

After a moment, the adult sits down across from you and puts her own laptop on the table, frowning at the screen as she taps away.

By the time you join the memo, there's already half a damn riot goin' on.

 

CURRENT caligulasAquarium [CCA] RIGHT NOW has joined memo

FGC: YOU H4V3 TO L34V3 TH3 BUGS 1N PL4C3 ONC3 TH3Y L34V3

CAG: What do you mean we can't just 8om8 them back?!?

CAG: They started it!!

FCG: AND ONCE THEY SHOW UP, THEY SAY THAT THEY DIDN'T ORDER IT.

FCG: SO WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE ASSHOLES TO EVERYONE.

CAO: Karkat is right, we can't aff9rd t9 6e seen as a threat right n9w.

CSS: Why not? T)(ose mother glubbers just tried to krill all of us. Why the shell shoaldn't we hit 'em first?

FTG: look you just cant

FTG: its a bad idea all around.

CTT: There is every chance that fighting back will open us up for 'Heroic' or 'Just' deaths.

CTT: By remaining passive in any potential conflict, it keeps us from being killed for good until we can figure out a way to defend ourselves. It also keeps those of us who aren't God Tier safe.

FGC: MY F3LLOW S33R 1S CORR3CT!

FGC: FOR TH3 MOST P4RT

CTT: Oh? Please elaborate.

FGC: TH3 PROSOCUT1ON S33S NO R34SON TO 3L4BOR4T3!

CTT: Nice.

FGC: TH4NK YOU, M1STER L3MON C4NDY! >: ]

CEB: anyway!

CEB: i went breeze and flew out to check it out.

CEB: theres eleven big ass ships out there. i think a couple of planes, too.

CEB: there were twelve, but yeah.

FTG: leave em alone

FTG: but dont go flying unless you can go intangible or teleport

FTG: getting blown up? surprisingly not as fun as it sounds

CTG: goddammit, now i have to go get my ass blown up dont i

CTG: fuck you future me.

CCG: NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL.

CCG: DEAL WITH IT, STRIDER.

CPF: I do not believe that being blown up is an experience conducive to living.

CCG: DON'T WORRY, HE'LL COME BACK TO LIFE.

CTT: Does all of this fuckery have a point? Or should I just sit back and enjoy the circle jerk?

CCG: FUCK OFF STRIDER. NO ONE FUCKING ASKED YOU.

CGK: Wait, how many of you kids have died before?

-Past terminallyCapricious [PTC] 50 hours ago has responded to the memo-

CEB: sorry gamzee! you'll have to reply in the present if you want to know what's going on!

-CEB has Banned PTC from responding to the memo-

CCC: O)(, pretty much all of us )(ave by now. You get used to it pretty quick!

CAA: yeah! Its kinda fun even! especially in the dream bubbles!

CTA: Except tho2e don't exii2t anymore.

CAA: we don't know that for sure!

CCA: This ain't paradox space anymore. Wwhy the hell wwould there still be dream bubbles?

CAA: Ummm

CHF: Jane, is this true?

CGG: Probably? There isn't a very high chance that dream bubbles would persist into the new universe, since they were a part of Paradox Space.

CHF: Jane.

CGG: Yes. I died.

CAC: :33 < Of purrs3 sh3 did! Sh3's god tier, silly!

CTG: nepeta, my darlingest, dearest kittycat? dont help.

CTG: Prolly a good idea to let Janeyjane handle her dad.

CCG: WAIT, WHEN YOU GUYS SAID THE ADULTS MIGHT REACT BADLY, DID THAT MEAN YOU WEREN'T GOING TO TELL THEM *ANYTHING*?

CEB: well, yeah.

CGG: pretty much.

CTG: looks like teh cats out of the big now.

CTG: *bag

CAC: :33 < h3h3h3h3h

CTT: I suppose we should fill them in with a bit more detail, if only to avoid further instances of bean spilling.

CGK: I would appreciate that, yes.

CHF: I too am interested in knowing exactly what was left out of our earlier briefing.

CPF: John, I am still proud of you for trying to protect me, but I am disappointed that you felt you had to lie.

CTD: Dave. Dirk. Other Dave.

CTG: Yeah yeah.

CTT: Living room, half an hour?

CHF: I will be there.

CGK: Same.

CPF: Agreed.

CEB: bluuuuh.

CEB: fine.

CEB: now can we please get back to figuring out how to respond to the fact that we were all almost blown up less than an hour ago?

FTG: like terezi said earlier

FTG: don't worry your pretty little head, egbert.

FTG: just don't get rid of the bugs.

CEB: uuuughhhh! what bugs???

CEB: that tells me nothing!

FTG: that's all i got for you now

FTG: ollies outy.

[FTG] has stopped responding to memo

FGC: TH4T 1S MY CU3, TOO.

[FGC] has stopped responding to memo

FCG: FUCK YOU GUYS. THIS IS POINTLESS, WHY THE FUCK WAS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE HERE IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE?

[FCG] has stopped responding to memo

CTG: i think i finally understand where karkat's coming from when he rants about his future self being an asshole

CCG: HAH. YOU HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED TO PLUMB THE DEPTHS OF THE SHEER ASSHOLISHNESS FUTURE US-ES ARE CAPABLE OF.

CTG: future me seems all right

CTG: seriously?

CTG: yeah why not.

CTG: its not like worrying is going to change anything

CTG: we can deal.

CCG: WHICH CHANGES NOTHING ABOUT MY PREVIOUS STATEMENT.

CCG: YOU’RE JUST WAY TOO USED TO DICKERY.

CTT: No dude, that's me.

CCG: ...

CTT: 'Cause I'm gay.

CCG: ...

CEB: lol

CTG: lmao

CTG: wow dude.

CGT: ahahahahaha

CEB: so i guess we're just supposed to wing it?

CGG: It looks like things will make more sense in a couple of days.

CEB: all right, whatever.

CEB: nothing's been decided, and nothing's been accomplished, but fine!

CEB: we're done.

CEB: everyone out!

CTT: A moment, please.

CTT: Karkat and Kankri? It would be a good idea if the two of you also joined us and the guardians in the living room to explain about your own sessions.

CCG: HELL NO. DEAL WITH THIS ON YOUR OWN.

CAO: I d9 n9t 6elieve that is a g99d idea.

CAO: It seems as th9ugh you have s9me pr96lematic t9pics t9 g9 9ver with y9ur lusii, and I w9uld n9t wish t9 make things m9re unc9mf9rta6le than they likely already will 6e.

CTT: That was not a question.

CTT: You will be there.

CCG: FUCK YOU LALONDE.

CTT has stopped responding to memo

CCG: SHIT, WHAT IS SHE DOING.

CCG: LALONDE?

CCG: OH FUAGIOEHAUDFEKLDFA

CCG has stopped responding to memo

CAO: …

CAO: I will meet y9u in the recreation 6l9ck sh9rtly.

CEB: looooooool

CTG: roflmao!

CTG: way to not take no for an answer rose

CEB: all right. i'm closing this down now.

CEB has closed the memo!

 

==>Hear the whole story for the first time.

Your name is James Crocker, and you are sitting in a room with three other adults, listening to your daughter, seven other teenagers (children, they are just _children_ ), and two aliens tell you about a game that sounds more like a cross between a war and an acid trip.

If you hadn't been involved, or at least taken into the Incipisphere with your house when she started the game, you would have thought she was crazy.

As it is, you're still having a hard time accepting what you're being told as true, especially since they seem to be going in as close to chronological order as they can.

Given the sheer amount of time shenanigans, this is turning out to be easier said than done.

You listen and watch as they recount their adventures, and you can feel the cold anger seeping from the blond man on one side of you, and the trembling of the woman on your other side as the children recount death and destruction and ruin.

It doesn't matter now that the children are alien or human. All that matters is that they were barely teenagers when this 'game' started, and that they had been fooled into participating in the end of the world.

You can see the guilt there, and the self loathing. To you, it sounds like the worlds would have ended anyway, once the reckoning had begun, but it sounds as though they think the reckoning would never have begun if they hadn't played the game. You aren't sure which is true, and you aren't sure you have all the information, so you keep your mouth shut and listen.

You hear about the human session; the one that your doppelganger and the two other adults sitting next to you originate from, and you're amazed at everything those four kids managed to pack into a single day. From entering the Medium, to dying, to undying, to time travel, to dying for real and going God Tier, to making contact with Horrorterrors from the Furthest Ring. (And that rings a bell, somewhere in your head. It sounds strangely familiar, as though you've read something similar, or heard about the Horrorterrors.)

Rose tells her mother about how she found her body, and that of John's father, and went Grimdark, losing herself into the fabled blackdeath trance of the woegothics.

Somehow, the calm, factual manner of the girl's recitation makes you even more worried for the children, even though the danger is passed.

They tell you about Bec Noir, and Dave's voice barely wavers when he recounts his brother's death in a monotone.

The other Dave, with wings, sits there, his face an expressionless mask as his counterpart speaks. He'd only spoken once, so far; explaining about the doomed timeline that had been caused by John dying before bringing Jade into the game.

Karkat had, inexplicably, flinched at that, but offered no explanation, so you had noted it, but tucked it away to question later.

The explanation goes on and on, and eventually you fall into a sort of stunned acceptance.

You had been trying to protect your Jane from anything that could truly hurt her for her whole life, and somehow, she'd stumbled into something that was far closer to a war then you'd ever wanted to even _think_ about her getting involved with.

But as she and Roxy and Dirk and Jake start talking about their own session, you can't ignore the _pride_ you hear in her voice as she tells you how strong she got; about how she grew, and never stopped trying to find you.

She blushes furiously when Trickster Mode comes up, and you can't help chuckling as you admit that you'd seen part of it, and relay your confusion about the seemingly radical shift in her personality.

The fondness in Roxy's voice when she speaks about Calliope is obvious, as is the revulsion on everyone's faces when Caliborn is mentioned. It's apparent that they'd prefer not to speak of him, but apparently he was a large part of the story, so they have to.

Their displeasure is borne out by calling him by various epithets, none of them pleasant, none of them his name.

All ten of them perk up considerably once they reach the 'final battle', and they start talking over each other, praising each other, or other members of their group, the other four trolls who were alive to help, or Calliope, who you are assured is an honorary troll.

Somehow, they manage to avoid telling you how, or maybe they aren't even sure, there ends up being three (or is it four? You can't tell anymore) versions of Jack Noir at the confrontation.

Nothing you hear past that point gives you a clear idea of what happened next, just that, when it ended, the victory platform had appeared, and they had stepped through.

"An' you know the rest." Roxy says simply, shrugging.

"The trolls from the Alpha session returned to life," Kankri puts in, gesturing vaguely at himself. "as well as the deceased trolls from the Beta session."

"None of us died for good," John adds, "But you guys came back, too."

"And I'm the modern Pinocchio." the Dave with wings chimes in, and it baffles you how this young man was, at one point, part of a game mechanic, yet still seems to be (excluding his large, obvious wings,) relatively normal and well adjusted.

"Gotta be honest," he adds, "I was expecting to just get shut down once the game ended. That's what the sprites do. Get shut down and reformatted back to basic to wait for the next session."

Several pairs of eyes turn to him, two of them horrified.

"What?" Jade's voice is almost a shriek. "Why the hell didn't you _say_ anything!?"

"Davespr- Da- Orange Dave, what the fuck?" John stumbles a couple of times, still trying to settle on what to call the other boy, who shrugs.

"Didn't make much difference to me. I was a doomed Dave anyway."

John's mouth moves soundlessly for a moment, and Jade's ears are flat, even as the Alpha kids (and oh dear lord, now they've got you doing it,) watch with mild interest.

"You idiot." Rose's voice is flat, toneless, but the open handed slap she delivers to the back of the other boy's head knocks his sunglasses off his face.

"Agh! Rose! What the fuck was that for, you crazy broad?" Dave-with-wings yelps, catching his sunglasses before they can hit the floor.

"You are a person." Rose explains, her voice infinitely patient, but with an edge of condescension that makes you arch an eyebrow. "Even when you were a sprite, you were still a person."

"Wait," Jade blurts abruptly, "Is _that_ why you broke up with me?"

Winged Dave squirms uncomfortably, then stiffens, forcing himself still.

"No."

Looking at the faces around him, you can tell that exactly no one believes him.

"Not entirely. Shit Harley, do we gotta do the whole custody battle in front of an audience? I didn't sign up for Jerry Springer, here. Shit, I don't even got a brick in my purse. Can we just, take a rain check? I swear, I'll get back to you on the rainiest fucking day. I'll even pick you up in an ark. Ju-"

The more Winged Dave's mouth ran, the narrower Jade's eyes got, until there was a sharp flash of green light, and all four of the so-called 'Beta Kids', plus Winged Dave, were gone.

"So that was a thing that happened." Roxy's grin is the most feline expression you'd ever seen on a human face, and the look on Karkat's face almost directly mirrored it.

"It's about time someone shut _one_ of those bulgelicking fucks up."

"Are we done here?" Kankri asks stiffly, not looking in his dancestor's direction, and you glance at the other adults.

Your doppelganger shrugs, and Mr. Strider simply vanishes, but Mrs. Lalonde leans forward slightly.

"I have questions, but I'd prefer to organize them to make sure I won't think of anything else first."

"I will make myself available when you are ready, then." Somehow, the troll manages to make his voice even more stiff and formal sounding, but he leaves the room silently.

Something in Karkat relaxes the instant the door closes behind his dancestor, snarling silently at the door.

"Fuck, I fucking _hate_ that guy."

Dirk raises an eyebrow silently, and Roxy grins lasciviously at the troll.

"Ohh reeeaaallly?" She drawls, and to your surprise, the troll flushes bright red.

"Oh for the love of- Shut _up_ , Lalonde. Eat a bulge and die."

Somehow, her grin gets even more lascivious. "Okay."

And on that note, you've had enough shocks for the day, so you stand, and make your way quietly out of the room.

Your doppelganger, (and you should, perhaps, start referring to him by his name in your head,) seems to have a stronger tolerance to teenage hijinks, and the sly smile on Mrs. Lalonde's face assures you that you'll find no respite with her.

But you're not quite as... open minded? Accepting? You don't like the connotations of those terms, but you can't quite put your mental finger on the one that fits best. All you can really grasp is the feeling of discomfort at the knowledge that your little girl has grown up, in ways that you can hardly fathom.

She's almost seventeen now. You missed her sixteenth birthday whilst you were imprisoned on Derse. She was looking for you, and someone told her that you were being horribly tortured, and you want nothing more to get your hands on whoever told her that and give them a good, solid thumping. (But apparently he’s dead now, for good, so you’ll have to settle for simply thinking very strongly about how much you wish to deliver the aforementioned thumping.)

Still, you are disturbed by more than your daughter's newfound maturity. (Though she isn't too much more mature. Just more cynical, or less. She's somehow seemed to become simultaneously more open-minded, and less idealistic at the same time. You aren't sure how to take it.) Instead, you're really concerned about the easy way those eleven children had talked about their own deaths, or the deaths of their enemies, or friends, or even of killing. It's as if it doesn't affect them anymore, and that thought worries you.

If the game has somehow warped their minds; made them see death as nothing more than a brief pause, or a minor inconvenience... well, you aren't sure what it would mean, but you get the idea that it wouldn't be anything good.

"It hasn't." The raspy, crow-like voice from behind you makes you jump, and when you turn you see one of the female trolls; the one who almost always wears rectangular red sunglasses and a teal, black, and red bodysuit.

"'m Latula Pyrope." She says abruptly, and, to your surprise, sticks out her hand. "Knight of Mind."

You shake her hand absently. You'd made it a point to memorize all of the trolls names, and you'd tried to match the names to faces, but for the most part the trolls tended to keep out of your way, and you, not wanting to push (and not entirely comfortable with them), had let them avoid you.

"What does that mean, exactly?" You ask, and she smiles at you, teeth sharp and dangerous looking even in a friendly smile.

"Knight means I protect, either from or with,” she rasps, “and I can use my aspect as the weapon or shield. Mind is my aspect. So I can protect or attack myself or others, from or with the minds of myself or others."

You nod, starting to get it. "So when you say that 'it hasn't', you mean..."

"The game hasn't made them numb like that. I'd be able to tell. They just learned to deal. We all did. Sure, it's sad when someone dies, and for most of us, it's hard to kill, but if it's necessary, then it'll happen. None of us want to end up in a doomed timeline, or dead again."

You hum thoughtfully, then turn towards the kitchen. You've always done your best thinking while baking, and right now you've got a lot to think about.

"Well, Miss Pyrope. Would you mind accompanying me? I believe I have some questions about classes and aspects that you might be able to answer."

You get another pointy, tooth filled grin, and a nod.

"Sure thing, Crockerdad."

You allow yourself a moment to be taken aback by the nickname, then huff a small laugh and lead the way to the kitchen.

Yes. You will be doing a lot of baking in the near future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, as you can see, I figured out a way to make the memos and pesterlogs stand out a bit more, so I've changed all the previous ones as well. Let me know what you think!  
> If you're interested in reading snippets that haven't made it in, or that might not make it in, or just reading my headcanons about troll biology, or how I'm going to handle Gamzee's insanity, check out my tumblr- kalicofox.tumblr.com  
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a good idea to read chapter 4 of Aftermath; Intervals if you want to know what's going on with Mituna here.

**Days in the future, but not many**

==>Rose; Convey your observations to Karkat

You are hesitant to interfere in matters that have been quite emphatically declared ‘Not your fucking business.’ but now, with Gamzee still holing up in his block and the potential for political, if not nuclear, fallout on the horizon, it seems as though you must, once again, stick your neck out.

Which means you need to beard the nubby troll in his den.

Sigh.

It would be more convenient if you could have this conversation over pesterchum, but doing it in person decreases the likelihood that Karkat will simply block you once he no longer wishes to hear what you have to say.

Which, granted, is likely to be approximately thirty seconds after you begin speaking.

Sigh again.

Still, it's best if you stop procrastinating. The sooner you get this over with, the sooner you can commandeer cuddles from Kanaya to wipe it from your memory.

With a third sigh, this one actually physical rather than simply mental, you lever yourself out of the incredibly comfortable armchair you had been curled up in and head for the transportalizer. A small portion of you hopes that Karkat won't be in his respite block, but the rest of you is determined to have this talk with him where he won't have an escape.

It is, unsurprisingly, a short trip to the floor Karkat had claimed, and you had to stifle a smirk at the random romance novels, romcoms, drawing supplies, and sickles scattered around the 'entry' room of the floor. What surprises you, however, is the odd juggling pin, occasional bike horn, or empty pie tin that lay amongst Karkat's junk.

Had Gamzee moved onto this floor? Or was Karkat simply missing his ex-moirail?

Either way, it would probably be a good idea to announce your presence rather than simply marching up to Karkat's respite block as you had planned.

"Karkat!" You call, your voice echoing oddly in the half empty room, "We need to talk!"

For a moment there's no reply, and you're halfway to resigning yourself to trying to have this conversation with him over pesterchum when you hear a slight creak and the shuffle-step of bare feet on carpet.

"Karkat?" You frown, and this time you get a reply that has you tensing almost involuntarily.

"Nah bitchsis, Karbro aint here."

"I see. And where might I find him?" You ask, and turn to face Gamzee.

To your surprise, he's as human as you are, with black hair that hits his shoulders and bright purple eyes (and you note absently that they're only a couple of shades off from your own,) that stand out against the dark bronze of his skin. He's watching you warily, as though you might at any moment pull out your Thorns and kill him, so you purposely relax, suppressing a smile as his posture mirrors yours and he shrugs.

"Dunno. Karbro up and left a while ago. Said something about finding some motherfucker to come check out my pan."

Your frown deepens, and you peer critically at Gamzee. "Is there something wrong?"

You get another shrug for your concern, and Gamzee looks away.

"Not as such to be worrying about. I aint gonna go painting with the righteous colors again."

You hum thoughtfully, then, as carefully as you can, you reach for the web of light in the back of your mind. You might not be able to reliably see the future on demand, but you are quite proficient at seeing the present. (You suspect that it may have been your latent Seer abilities that allowed you to read people so easily before the game; though, with how badly you were mistaken about your mother, you've had to re-think quite a bit of those assumptions as well.)

Gamzee tenses again at the slight brush of your power against him, but he makes no move to defend, or to attack, and you simply look at him, your eyes slightly unfocused as you try to 'read' what your powers are telling you about his present.

"Talk to Kurloz." You hear yourself say, your voice distant. "He'll know how to help. He has experience."

Now Gamzee is looking at you with uncharacteristic wariness, and that more than anything else shakes you out of your half trance.

"My apologies," you offer, giving him a thin half smile, "But I thought I might be able to tell the most advantageous way to solve your problem. I couldn't tell what it was, just that it seems to be exclusive to your caste. So, I suppose, as the only other member of your blood caste currently available, Kurloz would be the person to speak to."

Gamzee nods slowly.

"You got my motherfucking thanks then, Seersis." he says, and vanishes on silent feet back down the hallway and out of sight before you can say anything else.

Well. You suppose that 'Seersis' might just be better than 'Bitchsis', which apparently means that you have Gamzee's approval. For whatever that's worth.

Behind you, the transportalizer hums, and you turn just in time to see Karkat materialize on the pad, a deeper than usual scowl on his face.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

"Looking for you." You reply calmly, "Although I just had quite the fascinating conversation with Gamzee a moment ago."

Karkat groans, and drags a hand down his face. "Lalonde, I swear to-"

"It was just a talk." You reassure him, cutting him off before he could really get started, "My original intent was to find you, but I believe the conversation I wished to have is no longer necessary."

"What? Why?" Karkat's voice is harsh with suspicion, and your lips tip up into a small, secretive smile.

"I learned everything I needed to know."

And before Karkat can once again demonstrate his impressive vocabulary, you step onto the transportalizer and vanish.

 

==>Mituna; bug your dancestor

You absolutely would go bug your dancestor (and how fucking _awesome_ is _that_. You have an _ancestor_! _And_ a descendant!), but you're pretty sure that you were still pretending to be a pan-damaged idiot before you got several centuries worth of memories from your Alternian self shoved sideways into your thinksponge.

You were lucky that only 'Tulip was around to see your psionics when you first woke up from that dream.

(You _are_ lucky that you've somehow managed to keep being Mituna-from-Beforus, rather than Mituna-the Psiionic. You're trying really, _really_ hard to not think about the fact that thousands of sweeps worth of memories should have completely overwritten your own. _Would_ have overwritten your own, if you hadn't spent thousands of sweeps of your own in the dream bubbles; building up memories that are as different from Helming a starship as possible.

You're ignoring the fact that you should be a drooling, incoherent mess again. You're ignoring the sharp, new cynicism; the little voice in the back of your head that watches the 'highbloods' with suspicious eyes and demands to know the ulterior motive for everything.

The Psiionic was one paranoid fuck.

But then, his paranoia served him well, for the most part.)

But, you don't have to _not_ be a pan-damaged idiot to bug your dancestor...

A huge, evil grin spreads across your face, and you decaptchalogue your four wheeled device, toss it onto the hard wooden floor and jump on, sending yourself careening down the corridor with a whoop.

As usual, Sollux is already awake and on his computer, the bees buzzing around the room and streaming in and out of the window that was cracked open for their use.

"Thollukth!" You shout, and promptly crash into the side of the doorway.

You may have cut that a little too fine. Ouch.

"Tholluuuuukth!"

You're on your feet again. No mere door can keep you down! You are the doormaster! You are invincible!

"Thollukth Thollukth Thollukth Tho-"  
"What!?" Sollux finally snaps, and you grin at the psionic sparks crackling along his horns.

Heh. You've only just started and he's already irritated.

"Thollukth." you say, as seriously as you can manage. "You thould totally thare thome of your mind honey with me."

Sollux stares at you.

Or, you think he does. He's wearing those glasses of his, like the visor you've got, only smaller, and they do a _really_ good job hiding his eyes.

"No." he finally says, his voice flat as he goes to turn back to his computer.

"Oh come ooonnn." You're half whining, half cajoling, because you _know_ , deeply and personally, how much that particular pitch grates against your own ears, and you're pretty sure that it'll be the same for him.

"No! You do not eat the fucking mind honey! Empreth on a fucking _thtick_ , why would you _ever_ eat mind honey? Who in their right mind would let a thionic eat mind honey?"

You pause, absorb the vitriol in his voice, then shrug and let it go.

"Fine." You make sure your pout is visible. No need to freak him out with a tantrum like you can remember throwing at Bicyclopsdad in the dream bubbles. Or Equius, the other day. "Wanna play troll Left 4 Dead?"

"No."

"Troll Rethident Evil?"

"No."

"Troll Biothock?"

"No!"

"... Troll Call of Duty?"

"If I thay no, you're jutht going to keep lithting gameth, aren't you."

You grin at him. "Yup!"

Sollux stares at you for a moment, then sighs and drags a hand down his face. "Fine. But we're playing Troll Halo Four. And I get player two."

You cringe internally, but throw him a pair of thumbs up. "Thure! Letth gooo!"

And, grabbing his wrist, you drag him out of the room he'd claimed for his computers and towards the recreation block.

 

==>Sollux; Reconsider your life choices

Ohhh you are. You completely are. Somehow, your pan-addled idiot of a dancestor just managed to annoy you into agreeing to play video games with him, which means you're going to be stuck with him until he gets bored.

The last time someone tried to get away before he was ready to be done doing whatever the fuck they were doing together, the tantrum Mituna'd thrown had practically shaken the whole hive. You were not going to go through that in person. Especially since once the tantrum was over, Latula and Kurloz had taken Equius aside and, very calmly, very politely, outlined to him exactly what would happen to him if he ever triggered another meltdown like that again.

Well, Latula had explained. Kurloz had mostly just stood behind her and glowered.

For a guy that never talks, he can definitely get his point across.

(Though you still aren't sure that chucklevoodoos weren't involved somehow.)

You're halfway down the hall the recreation block is on when Mituna freezes, throwing an arm out and catching you across the chest.

"Mituna, what the fu-"

"Quiet!" He hisses back at you, and you scowl at him until the murmur of unfamiliar voices reaches you, muffled by the closed doors.

"Thtrangerth? How'd they get out here?" You murmur, and Mituna shrugs at you, then reaches up and pulls his helmet off.

"Can't hardly hear thit with thith thing on..." he mutters irritably, and you're about to ask what he's doing, when something about how he’s holding himself _changes_ and he's creeping down the hallway with grace you've never seen him exhibit.

He glances back at you, red and blue eyes glinting with amusement as he spots you gaping at him, and gestures for you to follow him as he approaches the door.

Your own eyes narrow behind your glasses, but you follow, keeping your footsteps as light as you can.

The voices get clearer the closer you get to the doors, and you frown when you recognize one of the human guardians answering.

You relax slightly when Karkat's customary snarl rises above the low murmur of voices, but Mituna tenses, and you can't identify the look on his face when you glance at him.

"-ank you for meeting with us." One of the unfamiliar voices is _really close to the door, oh shit oh shit_ , and, barely pausing to think, you lift yourself into the air with your psionics, and fling yourself back down the hallway, only remembering halfway to the transportalizer that _Mituna doesn't have psionics anymore, oh shit you left him back there and he'll get cau-_

But a glance backwards shows him, racing just behind you in his own telekinetic grip, with a sly grin on his face and his helmet still under his arm.

That mother _fucker_.

The surge of anger in your veins quenches the panic, and you pause, dropping lightly to the floor.

"The door didn't open." Mituna tells you quietly, and you take a deep breath.

Interrogate your dancestor later. Right now, there're strangers on the island, and you want to know what's going on.

"Good. We're going back."

You've used the high ceilings of Harley's hive to your advantage before, and if you'd been thinking clearly earlier, you would have just headed straight up, rather than fleeing back down the hallway in full view, and you silently curse your own idiocy as you lift yourself into the air and float upwards to hover horizontally, a bare inch shy of the ceiling.

Mituna stares up at you, and you lift one eyebrow challengingly. You saw him flying with his psionics. He can carry his own ass.

"If anyone athkth," he murmurs, his voice low as he lifts himself into the air, "you're carrying me."

You scoff. "No one'll athk. They all thtill think your thionicth are burnt out. How are they not, by the way?"

He's floating next to you as you drift down the hallway, and you see his shrug from the corner of your eye.

"I'll tell you later. Now quiet, or they'll hear uth!"

You scowl at your dancestor, but fall silent as you stop just outside and above the door, listening intently.

_"-ently the major governments of the world would like to know what, precisely, your intentions are."_

The voice is crisp and professional, and for some reason the sound of it sends honkbeast bumps running up your arms.

 _"And that means it's okay to fire a missile at us? With no warning?"_ Karkat's voice is harsher than normal, but you don't _think_ anyone who doesn't know him will realize it's because he's pants-shittingly terrified.

Fuck. You wish you could see what's going on in there, but you can't chance going out to listen at the window; it'd be too easy to be spotted.

_"We are currently investigating why that missile was launched; no orders to engage you were given, and we deeply regret any distress it caused your group."_

_"And now here you are, wanting to know our intentions. I'm sure the fact that we showed exactly how easy it would be to return any ordinance aimed at us to its point of origin had nothing to do with this decision."_ Rose's voice is as sharp as a knife, and you are, in spite of yourself, impressed.

 _"Of course not, Rose!"_ John's the one speaking now, his voice disgustingly cheerful, _"I'm sure it just took them some time to find the island and decide who to send! After all, it's not every day you get to meet aliens!"_

 _"Of course."_ Rose accedes, and you can practically _hear_ Karkat rolling his eyes.

_"What do we want? We want to forget that damn game ever existed. We want to get our shit together. Eventually, we're probably gonna want to rebuild our species."_

You can feel the tension in the room ratchet up from where you are, and Doom presses hard at your thinkpan.

_"I see. And are you aware that the planet Earth is currently facing an overpopulation problem? Where would trolls live?"_

For a moment, the other room is dead silent, then, thankfully, one of the adults that belongs here swoops in.

_"This is all theoretical at the moment, but I'm sure we can come up with some sort of solution, eventually. At the moment, however these kids are just that; kids, and I think it would be for the best if they had a chance to rest and recuperate from their ordeal."_

_"Of course. I trust that you will keep your group in line. There were concerns raised about two of your number. In particular, the troll with the genocidal tendencies...?"_

_"Don't worry about him."_ Karkat growls. _"He’s been taken care of."_

There's a pause, then; _"I see. Well then. I will leave you with my card. You may use the number on it to contact me in the event that your circumstances change."_

There's movement now, from inside the room, and it sounds like people are getting closer to the door, so you zip back down the hallway, around a corner, and out of sight.

When you peek back around the corner, Mituna is still floating above the now-open doorway, and he stays there, perfectly still, as several people in black suits file out of the room and down the hall towards the front door.

Not a single one of them looks up.

 

==> Be Roxy

You wait a couple of seconds, watching the government people in their snappy black suits file out of the room.

John lets out a huge breath that stirs the curtains on the windows across the room, and you let go of the Void you'd been holding around yourself.

"So." You say brightly, and grin when John jumps and swears. "That was interesting!"

"Roxy..." Your alternate sighs, but her lips are tipped up in an amused smile. "Were you here the whole time?"

"Yup!" You chirp, "I figured it was better to be safe than sorry!"

Karkat rolls his eyes, and John grins at you.

"Well thanks! I don't think they would do anything though. I mean, there's thirty-seven of us, and there were only five of them."

"Wrong!" A green and blue blur bounds into the room and skids to a halt in front of Karkat.

"AC is repurrting fur duty!" Nepeta grins, saluting Karkat sloppily.

"Nepeta!" You cheer, and bounce over to give her a hug.

Karkat scowls ferociously at the two of you, and Nepeta squeezes you once, then turns back to Karkat.

"It was a good idea to have me an Eridummy out keeping an eye on things." she says, as serious as she ever gets, "We saw at least furty others, ringed around the bottom of the mountain. They were all set up fur an ambush. Eridummy sent me back up here to report once we saw those guys leaving."

"You left him out there alone?" Karkat sounds concerned, for all that he'd sounded completely apathetic when he'd told the agent guy that Eridan was taken care of.

"Nah, Meulin was gonna keep him company. I think she wants to make sure they all get out of our territory."

Nepeta pauses for a moment, thinking, then; "Does she seem different, to you? More like us, and less like the other dancestors?"

Karkat shrugs the question off, but out of the corner of your eye you see a head of curly black hair pop around the corner of the doorway.

"Mituna?" You ask, and tilt your head to one side as the jumpsuit wearing troll grins his way on into the room.

"Oh great, it's Captor the second. What the fuck do you want?"

"We were lithening, KK." Sollux says casually, strolling into the room and past his dancestor.

"Oh, well that's just fucking great. Was _everyone_ in this fucking hive listening in?"

You're trying really, really hard not to laugh, but you can practically hear the kettle whistle blowing as Karkat gets more and more annoyed. Thankfully, you're saved by a sheepish voice coming from behind the closest curtains.

"Sorry old bean, I was here too."

And Jake pops his head out from behind the curtains.

Which, thinking about it, is a _really terrible_ hiding spot! How did no one see him there?

"Woah! What the hell? Where did you come from?" John sounds oddly impressed. "I didn't even feel you breathing!"

Jake's smile is a weird mix of sheepish and proud. "I've been practicing with my Hope powers. You know, seeing what works, and what doesn't! Apparently, I've got 'Hope really hard that no one notices me' down!"

"Psh! That's nothing!" Another voice, this one slightly grating, pulls everyone's attention over next to the fireplace. " _I_ managed to get lucky enough that no one spotted me! Or maaaaaaaaybe everyone was just too _un_ lucky to find me!"

Vriska grins at the way Karkat's eyebrow has started twitching, and John's impressed awe, but you just roll your eyes.

Yeah, okay. That was pretty cool, but self aggrandization is just obnoxious.

“Yeah, that’s cool and all,” Jade’s voice says out of nowhere, “But _I’ve_ been listening in this whole time from my room!”

“Wait, what?” Karkat demands, and you can hear Jade’s grin in her voice when she replies.

“Oh yeah! I finally figured out how to stabilize micro-wormholes. This one is under the couch, since I can’t make it invisible. Dave and Tavros and Terezi and Meenah and Feferi and Kanaya and I heard the whole thing!”

“Daaamn girl!” You cheer, grinning widely, “Way to go!”

“How did you get Strider to shut up long enough to hear anything?” Karkat asks, faux solicitously, and John snorts with laughter.

“Hey man,” Dave starts, “I am the king of stealth. Th-”

"Putting aside all of your rather impressive eavesdropping skills," Crockerdad interrupts firmly, and ignores the grins that break out across basically everyone's faces at the implied praise, "I believe now is not the time."

"Yeah," Karkat agrees, turning back to Nepeta, "You were keeping an eye on them others, right? What did you see?"

Nepeta frowns slightly, thinking. "There were about furty, like I said,"

"Thirty? Or forty?" Karkat interrupts impatiently, "I swear to gog, this would be so much easier if you would just can the fucking cat puns for five fucking minutes."

Nepeta rolls her eyes. "Karkitty, you're too serious! There were _th_ irty or so." she emphasizes the 'th' sound, and Karkat nods, frowning in thought.

"It looked like they set up an ambush, and I don't think they spotted me or Eridummy while we were scouting them, 'cause they didn't do anything until those guys came back out. They were probably backup in case we did anything to the guys you were talking to."

"Did you check anywhere else?" Jake asks, "I mean, if it were me, I'd want to have someone stick around to keep an eye out for any nefarious plans!"

Nepeta shakes her head. "We just kept an eye around the mountain. We didn't want to miss anything!"

"We should check out the most likely places for a camp to be set up, then, if only so we know where they are, and what they'd be most likely to see." Rose says contemplatively, and John looks at Jake.

"Do you know where good places to check might be?"

Jake shakes his head ruefully. "Sorry chap. This island is the same general shape as mine, but without years of monsters trampling hither and yon, the terrain is quite different. The only really likely place I can think of is the Frog Temple; it's got a good line of sight to the mansion, and it's ready shelter."

"That would be pretty obvious," John muses, and Karkat snorts.

"Which means that they probably wouldn't set up shop there. No way would any military force be that fucking stupid."

"We'll check anyway." Rose says firmly, and gets a grudging nod from the nubby troll.

"Actually, I could probably sweep the island pretty quickly by myself." John says thoughtfully, but Rose shakes her head.

"No. The others need to have something to do, or they'll just get bored. If we can give them something legitimate to do, then so much the better."

"More bored than they already are, you mean." Karkat says, "I swear, if I have to listen to Nitram bitch about going out to fly one more fucking time, I will do the most acrobatic fucking pirouette off the gogdamn handle this universe has ever fucking seen. You'd think we were keeping him locked up or some shit."

Nepeta nods sympathetically, "I know, it's like he thinks he needs purrmission to do _anything_."

"At least Tavros does whatever he wants." Vriska agrees, "Even if what he wants is _unspeakably lame._ "

“Hey!” Tavros’ voice says from under the couch, and is summarily ignored.

"Right," John says, clapping his hands once, "So we'll let the Alpha trolls sweep the island, if they want. Great."

"Y'might want ta get some a us sea trolls patrolin' the waters around th' island." A new voice adds, and you turn to see a damp troll that you vaguely recognize step into the room, closely followed by Nepeta's dancestor.

"What do you mean?" Karkat demands, "What did you find?"

"There's somethin' out in th' water." He says, venturing a couple of steps closer as his ear fins flare slightly, "Sounds mechanical an' big, but it doesn't look like any ship I ever saw. I didn't want ta get too close in case it had radar or somethin', but from what I saw and heard it doesn't ride in the water right."

"A sub?" John asks and Rose frowns, closing her eyes momentarily.

The wet troll must be Eridan, you realize, and you frown at the realization that you hadn't actually seen him more than once or twice since you all exited the game.

"Yes." Rose agrees, opening her eyes in time for you to catch a glimpse of gold fading from her eyes. "There's a submarine out there. It's probably there to keep an eye on us."

"If you can just close your eyes, and _know_ that there's a submarine (whatever the fuck that is) out there, why can't you just close your eyes and know if there's a camp out there?" Karkat demands, and Rose gifts him with a beatific smile.

"Because then you wouldn't have anything to do."

"You- but- I-" Karkat splutters, and you burst into helpless giggles at the look on his face.

Even Eridan loosens up slightly, his lips twitching slightly before he schools his expression back into careful impassitivity.

"So what's a 'sub', anyway?" He asks, shoving his hand through his hair and slicking it back out of his eyes.

"It's basically a huuuuge metal tube that people can ride around in under water, and it can stay down for a really long time." You tell him, still grinning slightly, "You didn't have subs on Alternia?"

Eridan scoffs, "Hell no. Landdwellers might be able ta captain ships, but underwater is seadweller territory."

"Also, there's the gigantic killer tentaclebeasts." Karkat deadpans, and Eridan half shrugs.

"That too."

"Wait," Jake jumps in excitedly, "You had Kraken!?"

"If by 'Kraken', you mean a gigantic croth between a horroterror and a mutated featherbeatht," Sollux says distractedly from where he'd been setting up a game grub and trying to connect it to the television, "Then yeth. That'th why only crathy people go to the beach."

"That's so _cool._ " John gushes, and gets a weird look from Eridan while Karkat simply facepalms.

"What were you even doing in the water?" Karkat asks, squinting suspiciously at Eridan.

"Most a the humans left in the shuttles-"

"Helicopters." Rose corrects idly, and ignores the half-hearted glare it nets her.

"Most a them left in the _helicopters._ " Eridan starts again, "But some a them headed down to the beach an' took a little boat off th' island. I wanted to know where they were goin', so I followed 'em for a while."

"And?"

Eridan shrugs. "And then they met up with the sub, an' got on board, an' I came back."

"Right. Okay. Seadweller patrols are probably a good idea." Karkat says distractedly, and you tune out as Karkat and Eridan start trying to hash out schedules and patrol routes right then and there.


	8. In which Davesprite finally gives himself a name.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davesprite gives himself a name, and loses something else. The adults realize that thirteen year olds don't really know all that much about The Way Things Are, and everyone is, still, trying to figure shit out.

==> Davesprite??? Dave? Wing guy? Whoever you are; take some time to yourself.

Being here at Harley's is a trip and a half. There's green everywhere, and where there isn't green, it's blue, and the roof is hella high up, so you can hang out there if you wanna be left alone. You haven't quite decided if it's better'n Huston, but then, you suppose it doesn't matter if it is, 'cause you for damn sure can't go back there. Not with your wings. You'd be carted off before you could blink and locked up in a lab somewhere, and that's if you didn't just get shot; some asshole with a gun freaking the fuck out and killing you for being a demon or whatever.

Still, it's nice enough, for a basically deserted island. Lots of space to fly around.

It'd be nicer if everyone wasn't walking on fucking eggshells around you though.

You hadn't _meant_ to say that. About being pretty sure you were going to end up wiped by the game code once they won. You're pretty sure your ears are _still_ ringing from all the shouting that Jade did, and the sad, mopey looks that John had shot you during your little chat with them had been... just no. Ugh. The feels.

You cringe slightly, and scrub your hands through your hair. Other Dave had, thank whatever, stayed pretty much in the background. He knew the score. Daves from alternate timelines died. That's how it worked. Only the Alpha Dave had a future, and even though you'd found a pretty sweet loophole, the game was sure to close it at some point.

And then it hadn't and here you are. It's been, what, a week? And it still hasn't really sun-

Holy shit.

Oh shit no.

You just-

There was a time thing.

You wanted to know how long you'd been here and _you didn't know._

Mentally you flail around, grasping for the quiet, soothing flow of time in the back of your head, and fail to find it.

Your wings are going nuts, transmitting your sudden panic for anyone to see (if there was anyone up here _to_ see), twitching and flaring and- _shit!_

The wind had caught them at just the wrong angle and blown you off the roof.

There's no one around, and you let yourself fall for a couple dozen feet, swearing at the top of your lungs before flicking a couple of feathers with instincts you still don't quite understand and flipping yourself around to face the ground.

Another feather twitches, your wings open slightly, and now you're diving at the ground, the wind screaming past your ears.

Can't just bust those puppies open; not with your weight. Funny story; dislocating a wing? Hurts like a _bitch_. And then Jane'll bitch you out for being a dumbass. Again.

Your wings open another little bit, the feathers making minute adjustments, and your angle changes. Now you aren't headed for a hate-date with the ground. Instead you're more angled, letting the wind resistance bleed off your downward momentum as it catches your partially extended wings and turns it into forward movement and speed.

Only now do you let your wings snap open, and the air rushing over-under-around your wings thrusts you back into the sky and away from the ground. Normally the adrenaline rush of just _flying_ would have you feeling like everything would be all right, but now you're sill internally panicking about this latest bit of game fuckery, and you turn back toward the house, arrowing towards the front door as fast as you can.

You're still going a little fast when you hit the ground, and you run a few steps to keep from faceplanting, then decide that that's a good idea. You keep running, flashstepping up the stairs, through the front door, and down the hall, bursting into the nearest room you could hear voices from.

"My powers are gone." You announce, and holy _shit_ there are more people in here then you expected.

"Your powers are _what!?_ " Someone shouts, and suddenly there's even more people in the room than before, and everyone is talking over everyone else.

For a few seconds, there's nothing but pandemonium, and your instincts are screaming at you to take to the air, 'cause being grounded around so many loud, upset people means basically nothing good.

" _ENOUGH!_ " Karkat bellows over the noise, and silence falls like a thunderclap, even though some mouths are still moving.

"Eridan," Karkat turns toward the douchey looking troll with the purple streak in his hair, "See if your dancestor'll agree to doing patrols."

"He will if he knows what's good for him." The meaner of the two Piexes promises, grinning like a shark, "Me and Fefishy'll head out to keep an eye on things."

Feferi giggles slightly, but nods.

"Great. Good. Whatever. Just get the hell out of here." Karkat sighs, sounding long suffering, and the three fish trolls head out.

"Tavros, drag your useless lump of a dancestor out to do a flyover of the island. I don't care how, just get his ass out of the hive. Nepeta, go keep your dancestor company or something."

"I can do that, I think." Tavros acknowledges, and leaves, resolutely ignoring Vriska, who'd been trying to catch his eye ever since he'd appeared in the room. Nepeta salutes Karkat, and bounces out of the room after Tavros.

"Vriska, leave. I don't care what you do, just get out."

"Awww... Karkles, c'mon! This is interesting!!!" Vriska pouts at him, and Karkat's perpetual scowl deepens.

"No. Go. Do something else."

"Fine!" Vriska huffs, and stomps out of the room, slamming the door.

"Harsh." the other Dave offers into the silent room, and Karkat stiffens slightly, then forces himself to relax and turns to you.

"Now. You. Explain."

You shift slightly, your wings adjusting themselves, flaring and resettling as you stomp down the urge to start rambling. Instead you manage to just tell everyone who hadn't been ushered out of the room what you'd just realized.

"Shiiiiiit." John moans into his hands when you'd finished, and the faces of the other players are pale. You get why; if the players suddenly start losing their powers, then the chances of being able to keep the trolls safe are really fucking low, and the chances of _all_ of you ending up in some fucked up lab somewhere are really, really fucking high.

"Is this a new development?" Momlonde asks suddenly, frowning slightly, and you frown too.

"Well, yeah. I mean, I could still use the timetables before, and even when I was Davepetasprite, I could still feel Time, I just couldn't use it. I could feel whatever it was Heart was supposed to do, too, and that shit was weird as hell. Now, it's just _gone._ "

And you hate yourself a little for it, but your voice breaks slightly on the last word.

Suddenly you've got an armful of whining, dog-eared, space witch clinging to you and you wrap your arms around her, burying your face in her hair and inhaling her familiar scent.

"That's not what I meant." Momlonde says, in the same tone of voice Rose uses when she's working through a theory even as she's talking it out. "Have you tried to do anything 'timey' since you all left the game?"

"Wait," Dave says suddenly, "Do you think this is the game fucking with us _again_? Shutting him down because he was a sprite?"

For a split second you _hate_ the other Dave. You would like nothing more than to punch him square in his _smug bastard face_ , but then Jade's arms tighten around you, and you realize that the blood's drained from Dave’s already pale face, and that even Karkat is looking pale and queasy at the thought.

"No, I don't. Not yet at least." Momlonde says firmly, "Da-Othe-" she fumbles for a moment with what to call you, and you sigh and take the plunge.

"D. Call me D."

Smiles break across faces all around you, and Momlonde inclines her head towards you.

"D. Have you tried to do anything time related since you left the game?"

For a moment you just stand there, holding Jade and wracking your brain, trying to think if you had.

"Nooo?" you try cautiously, still thinking hard. "I don't think so? I mean, it's automatic, most of the time, just stuff like knowing what time it is, or how long it's been between things, but..." you shake your head.

"No. I'm pretty sure I haven't. It's not like we're on a schedule here or anything. I haven't really needed to."

"That's right..." Dave's voice is thoughtful now, and you tilt your head slightly as you look at him.

"It's just," he says, "when killer clown was trying to take off Jane's pretty little head, my first instinct was to get as many mes in there as possible. But there weren't any of you."

Your eyes widen, and for a moment you're dumbstruck.

"Shit. I didn't- I didn't even _think_ about it. It didn't even- _shit!_ "

Your arms tighten convulsively around Jade, and she grunts slightly, but tightens her own hold on you until you loosen your grip and step away, schooling your face back into impassivity.

"Right. So I don't have any powers anymore. What now?"

"I don't think that's entirely accurate." Rose cuts in thoughtfully as John opens his mouth, and he shuts it with a click of teeth.

"All right, oh queen of skullfuckery, lay it on me. How am I not basically more useless than the average feather duster?"

Rose's sly smile at that, and the spluttering laughter from Roxy and Jake more than make up for the pained expressions on three out of the four adult's faces as Rose wraps one arm around Kanaya's waist.

"If you would open your wings, I shall, indeed, lay it on you." She says with a smirk, and you frown glancing around yourself to make sure there's space before spreading your wings as wide as you can.

There's a couple of muffled sounds, but you can't pinpoint who they're coming from, so you keep your eyes on Rose as she slips away from her girlfriend and steps toward you, humming thoughtfully under her breath.

You try not to twitch when she circles around behind you, and when she emerges from behind your wings she's got that familiar 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' smirk on her lips.

"Well?" You ask, ignoring the way your wings are starting to tremble slightly with the effort of holding them open so long without the wind to support them for you.

"Your wings are too small to support you in the air." Rose says simply. "You can close them now, by the way."

Gratefully, you fold them back against your back as Jade frowns between you and Rose.

"What do you mean, they're too small?" She demands, "They're huge! The tops are over his head, and they almost drag on the floor!"

"And they're still too small." Rose counters calmly, "The wingspan is fairly impressive, yes. It looks to be about ten or eleven feet, but there simply isn't enough surface area. He shouldn't be able to get off the ground."

For a moment, _everyone_ is staring between Rose and you, then John bursts out with "How do you even _know_ that!?" and Rose's composure cracks slightly.

"Oh for the love of- look." and she hauls her laptop out of her sylladex, flipping it open impatiently and typing rapidly for a moment before gesturing for everyone who can to gather around.

"Here's a picture of a Great Albatross. Look at how much wing there is _width_ ways, compared to the body."

It's just a silhouette of a bird, but you think you can see what she means. The width of the wings are almost as long as the body of the bird is, but your wings are different. The feathers closest to your body barely even brush the top of your ass (which, honestly, is probably a good thing, otherwise you'd have an even _harder_ time taking a shit.)

"But I'm part crow, not albatross." You point out in what you think is a reasonable voice, but Rose glares at you, then silently concedes the point. A second of typing later has a bunch of pictures of crows come up on her screen.

"Even so." She says after allowing you a moment to compare the structure on the screen to your own, "Your wings are, to put it bluntly, too thin. You should not be able to fly."

"But how did you just know that off the top of your head?" John persists, and Rose rolls her eyes.

"You would be amazed at the things a fanfiction writer must know in order to perfect their craft, John," is all she says, and Dave starts coughing suddenly, his face bright red.

One elegant eyebrow arches as Rose puts her laptop back away, and you get out of the line of fire before she can remember that at one point you were Dave and therefore might have any idea what she's talking about.

"So _anyway_ ," Karkat interrupts, glaring indiscriminatingly around the room, "what the crochblistering _fuck_ does that have to do with him not having any powers anymore?"

"D still has powers." Rose says simply, "That's why he can fly. They just aren't linked to time anymore. It's entirely possible that upon our exit from the game, when you stopped being a game construct you also ceased to be a Knight of Time."

"So... I don't have any classpect at all?" You ask, and your blood runs cold as Rose starts to shake her head, then pauses with a strange look on her face, and finally shrugs.

"I don't know?" She tries and frowns faintly. "A moment please."

And just like that, she tunes out.

"So." Roxy's sidled over, grinning at you. "D, huh? Not gonna go with Dove? Or Byrd?"

You raise one eyebrow, scoffing, "Nah. I mean, sure, I've got the wings and the delicate, princesslike disposition, but where'd I find a prince to protect my pure ass self around here? Nothin' but witches and rogues as far as the eye can see. "

"Say it isn't true!" Roxy cries dramatically, clasping her hands under her chin as Jade starts to giggle.

"Hey now." Dave deadpans from a couple of feet away, "What about us Knights? I hear that princess saving is part of the job description, and I haven't had my shot just yet."

You smirk at your twin-clone, then place the back of your hand delicately against your forehead. "Oh swoon! I am overcome with your sheer knightlyness, Sir Dave! Please, save me from these two snarky broads before I'm overcome!"

Jade and Roxy grin at each other, then, as one, pounce on you, sending you stumbling backwards as you flail for your balance.

"Shit!"

"Hey! Watch it!" another voice yelps, and you trip backwards, your wings flailing to try to catch you and hitting something else that yelps with pain.

You brace yourself, ready to hit the ground, and instead feel only a light tingling sweeping across your skin as you're lifted higher into the air, moved a ways to the left, then dumped on the ground in a pile with Roxy and Jade.

"Jesus _christ Jade get off! Getoffgetoff **getoff**!" _

You'll worry about losing your cool in front of Br-everyone later, when you don't have someone lying on your wing and wrenching it backwards at a weird angle that _hurts like a bitch_. It feels like someone's reached into your goddamn chest and is stabbing your fucking _heart_. Now you know what people mean when they say 'blinding pain'.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Roxy yelps and in an instant the weight eases off your wing, and your vision starts to come back.

"Da-" Jade shakes her head where she's hovering above you, "D, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." And to prove it you try to roll sideways so you can climb to your feet, only for your whole body to stiffen in agony the second you try to curl your wings close enough to you for that maneuver to work.

"Here." Roxy says instead, her pink eyes worried, and, grabbing your hands, hauls you to your feet like you weigh nothing.

"Who did I hit?" You ask, glancing around, and wince when you see Mituna with his hands clapped to his nose, yellow blood leaking between his fingers.

"Oh shit, dude, I'm sorry."

"Fuck you, you fucking athbucket." He says back, his voice muffled by his hands, but more half of what you've ever heard him say consists of swearing at random people, and he doesn't sound _too_ mad, so you try not to take it personally.

"Suck a bulge, dickweasel." You shoot back, and consider your obligation to care done with.

"Seriously, D, are you okay?" Jade's starting to go from just worried to worried and pissed, so you roll your shoulders experimentally, covering the wince with an impassive mask as the muscles where your left wing attaches to your back twinge sharply.

"I'm fine. Feels like just a pulled muscle. Some ice and I'll be fine."

It's more than you'd tell anyone else, but sue you, in the time you'd been together she'd trained you well.

==> James Crocker; Skip Forward a Bit

"Are we sure this is wise?"

You and the other three adults have gathered in the kitchen, mugs of coffee, tea in the case of Ms Lalonde, sitting close to hand.

Joseph, your doppelganger, sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"Even if it wasn't, do you think we could stop them?" He asks, and you see your weariness reflected on his face. "These children aren't children anymore, and they've more than shown us that they're capable of more than we can imagine."

Dirk, the eldest Strider, scoffs from where he's leaning against the counter, and you raise an eyebrow at him, inviting him to share.

"They might have bullshit super powers." He says after a moment, "But they have no idea how people think, or what they're capable of."

You, Joseph, and Roxanne all wince in unison.

"There is that." Joseph agrees, "John does tend to be a bit... optimistic, when it comes to other people. And he tends to ignore whatever doesn't quite fit into his world view."

"And Rosey is..." Roxanne hesitates, searching for the right words. "She's smart, but she doesn't really..."

"Know when to quit?" Dirk offers, and Roxanne nods almost miserably into her tea. "Yeah, I got that from the skullfuckery comment. She's into psychology then?"

"It was one of her favorite games when she was little." Roxanne confirms with a fond smile, "We'd watch movies, and she'd try to diagnose the characters."

You nod. "Jane was the same with mysteries, but after the fourth assassination attempt..." you shrug helplessly, "She got to be quite cynical. It worried me, a little, and I suppose my protectiveness didn't really help."

"Woah, hold up." Dirk's eyebrows are at his hairline, and Roxanne and Joseph look flabbergasted. "Who the hell was trying to assassinate a kid?"

"I always assumed that the assassins were sent by enemies of the Crocker Corporation." you tell them, then chuckle mirthlessly, "I suppose, with what we now know of my 'grandmother' that they were; just not for the reason I thought."

"And that leads us to the other children." Joseph sighs, and Roxanne groans.

"Four kids, each with minimal human contact for most of their lives. It's a miracle they aren't even _more_ maladjusted."

"Roxy did say that she had neighbors," you point out, and Dirk nods.

"Carapacians." He agrees, "I got the lowdown on those from one of the trolls. Aranea, I think it was. She seems to like explaining some of this shit."

Roxanne leans toward him, curious, and Dirk elaborates.

"They're basically sentient chess pieces. They lived on the moons in the game, and I have no goddamn idea how they ended up on some future earth."

"But they were intelligent?" Roxanne presses, and Dirk shrugs, then nods, and Roxanne sighs with relief and slumps back into her chair.

"That's a relief." She murmurs, and you nod.

"So, that just leaves Dirk." You say thoughtfully, "How did he even survive infancy?"

"He mentioned something about robots, didn't he?" Joseph is frowning, and you do your best to remember the mildly horrifying conversation in which the children had cleared up all of the 'misunderstandings' about the game.

The Dirk in the room with you says nothing, but he's gone even more still than he normally hold himself.

"If he was raised by robots, with only access to whatever internet remained in his future, then he wouldn't have a very good idea about what 'normal' is." You muse, then sigh.

"So we have eight human teenagers-"

"Nine." Dirk cuts in, "D counts."

You nod at him, "Nine human teenagers who have very little idea about the way humans actually are past the age of thirteen."

"And twenty four aliens, half of whom are convinced that all adults are out to kill them, and the other half of whom are from a society I'm half convinced regularly brainwashed their populace to keep them complacent." Roxanne adds with a groan.

You groan too, at that thought, because that horrifying concept hadn't even occurred to you. Dirk waves the idea off.

"Even if they had been, they aren't now." He says, "That's what all that creepy brainscanning shit was about when we first got here. Getting rid of 'outside mental influences'."

Roxanne groans louder. "That's even _worse_. If they _were_ being manipulated, then it's entirely likely that there will be an upswing in all _kinds_ of behavior that we aren't equipped to handle!"

"So we'll leave that to the children." Joseph says firmly, and you can't help but lift an incredulous eyebrow at him.

"No, hear me out." he says, catching sight of you, "Each of those children is more experienced with trolls than we are, and more equipped to deal with them. They can handle it. What they _can't_ handle, is the shades of grey that adults so often live in."

"So what do you want to do about it?" Dirk asks sardonically, and Joseph gets a maniacal gleam in his eyes.

"Why, what any parent does, of course. We send them to school."

You are extremely gratified that you are not the only one who chokes.

 

Once Joe stops chortling and starts explaining, though, you find yourself more and more intrigued by his idea.

The way he explains it is a combination of homeschooling, and that newfangled 'unschooling' that you'd started hearing about just before your house had been whisked away to what the kids had called 'The Medium'.

They would, for the most part, be allowed to continue doing whatever they liked. Certain things, however, they would be strongly encouraged to do or discuss. Things like current events (and you reminded yourself that you would need to read up on those as well,) the history of this world, mathematics, and etiquette could be addressed as they came up, and possibly worked into the normal day-to-day activities without the children catching on.

The main catch comes when you start trying to decide who should be to go-to adult for what information.

"I can't be around the kids." Dirk says firmly, and his hands are clenched around the edge of the counter so hard his knuckles are turning white. "The trolls, sure. But not the kids."

"Dirk," Roxanne says gently, her eyes soft, "you can't avoid him forever."

Dirk laughter is a bark so bitter it makes you flinch, but Roxy remains unmoved.

"I sure as hell can try." he retorts. "No kid deserves the hell I put him through. Shit, the only reason I'm still here is so that he won't think I've abandoned him on top of everything else. The _least_ I can do is stay out of his damn way."

Joe is frowning, and Roxanne is shaking her head but she lets it drop, and, incrementally, Dirk relaxes.

Ironing out specifics takes another pot of coffee, and in the end, Dirk insists on abstaining entirely so no one can claim he's showing favoritism or something ridiculous like that.

"That could be a problem." Roxanne murmurs when the kitchen door swings shut behind him and you scrub at your face with your hands.

"Of course it will be." Joe agrees wearily, "I don't suppose either of you know the specifics?"

You shake your head, and stare mournfully into the sludge at the bottom of your coffee mug. "Just what was mentioned in the first memo we were invited to. The mind control and such."

"Same." Roxanne admits.

"Me too." Joe says, "I think we could find out more from the web series, though, if we chose to look at it."

Roxanne frowns at him, propping her head up on her fist. "What makes you say that?"

"The way the agents were looking at Dirk, when they were here earlier." Joe says, and, thinking about it, it _had_ looked like the agents had had a problem with Dirk, though there was no way he could possibly have met them before.

"Dirk said 'the hell I put him through'." you realize suddenly, and your gut churns. "You don't suppose he was made to..."

"Abuse Dave?" Roxanne fills in the blanks, looking slightly sick. "That would make the most sense."

Joe's face is carefully, dangerously blank. "So we have two abused children, on top of the four children raised with minimal human contact." he says, and for a moment, you're confused.

"That's right." Roxanne says, and lets her head drop onto the table. "D. He was Dave until the timeline split, wasn't he? So he has all of those experiences as well."

"And he said he was there when Dirk died." you say, your eyes closing as if you can ward off the headache you're getting just thinking about this mess. "So he's got that trauma on top of everything else."

"I think," Joe says carefully, "that I am going to borrow Karkat's vocabulary for a moment. This is an _absolute clusterfuck_."

"Of epic proportions." Roxanne agrees, still facedown on the table.

With a sigh, you stand and move over to the coffee maker. This is going to take a lot more caffeine to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry for the wait. It's been hard to find the inspiration to write until the last week or so. If you wanna give me prompts, to help me write the next chapter, or to just see bits and pieces in different points of view, then check out my tumblr: kalicofox.tumblr.com


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stuff happens, and then more stuff also happens.

==> Gamzee; Follow the Seersis' advice.

You might not wanna have much to do with all of those other fuckers, but your Brother'd helped you out before. He knew what was up. He'd get it, you hoped. Your pan might not be as rotted gone as it was in the game, but you know it's still not all there.

'S far as you can tell though, everyone's out, or distracted with whatever the hell's going on down on the main floor, which makes this the best time to try to find him.

That means you gotta leave your 'block.

Not just stand here staring at the door.

Fucking empress, just get the fuck over there, put frond to knob, open the damn door and walk the fuck out.

'Snot that hard.

One deep breath. Two. Three steps to the door. Twist the knob and pull the door open.

There. You're out of your fucking block. Was it really that fucking hard?

You take a deep, shuddering breath. Yes. Yes it really was.

Now you just have to figure out where the hell Kurloz is.

It takes you stopping on three different floors to realize that it'd probably be easier to find him if you were a troll, so, with a cringe, you shift back for the first time since you'd first claimed a block on Karbro's floor as your own.

The extra sense that the chucklevoodoos provides you _slams_ into your mind, and you flinch away from the flood of _worryfearanxietyprotectivenessfiercehorrordisgust_ that is the product of all the sapient beings on the island. There's a lot more than you expected, and for a moment you just lean up against a wall, sucking air in through your nose, and exhaling hard through your mouth. 

It takes you a few minutes, but you manage to shove it all down and out of the way in your pan so that you can actually think again. Mirthful and Wrathful, how did any of the bros and sisters  _live_ like this? It's like a constant carnival in the back of your head, and it ain't like no carnival you'd ever wanna visit. 

Pushing yourself back off the wall, you take a deep breath, then let go of the smallest trickle of chucklevoodoos you can. You'd learned that much from your schoolfeeding. It was supposed to be a way to warn off any other brother that might be getting too close.

The spike of  _FEAR_ in the back of your mind makes you cringe, but a second later there's an answer. A surge of creeping prickles up your posture pole, accompanied by the phantom impression of wordless whispers from juuuust behind you.

You sag with relief even as your pan spikes with pain, and reign in your chucklevoodoos. You won't have to go looking for him.

If there's one thing you learned from doing the legwork for Ca... from working with  _him_ , it's that Kurloz's pretty fucking reliable.

He'll find you.

In the meantime, you can just... sit here, and try not to listen to the information the chucklevoodoos are cramming into your aching thinksponge.

  
  


==>Kurloz; find him.

When you first feel the wave of formless unease, you're well pleased. Finally the brother's got his pan back on straight. Finally he's back to being the Brother you knew. But when you answer his mental 'touch' with a brush of your own, you can feel him recoil in  _relief_ , not the dark gleefulness you're used to. The fact that the hint of skittering shadows and sensation of being  _watched_ vanishes soon after makes you curious, and you abandon your husktop to go looking for him.

It doesn't actually take you that long to find him; he's only a couple of floors away, sitting with his back to the wall and his grey on yellow eyes fixed firmly on the stairwell and transportalizer.

You frown.

That... doesn't look right.

There's something off.

Curious now, you nudge his mind with your own, a sort of 'what's up?', and your eyebrows shoot up as red starts bleeding into the yellow of his eyes, and a low, rattling snarl starts up deep in his chest.

Well shit.

Apparently you gotta reign that shit  _right_ the fuck in.

So you do, reeling in your mind and clamping your chucklevoodoos down as tight as you can behind an iron wall in the back of your sponge as you walk casually over to him and slide down the wall to sit next to him.

If this is what it's looking like, (and how the hell you missed it, you'll never know) then calm and casual and as little psychic shit as possible is the name of the fucking game unless you wanna be dealing with an outta control purple that's your same sign.

_'What's goin' on, brother?'_ Your fingers fly through the signs, a mode of communication older and more familiar to you than talking, now, but by the look on Gamzee's face, he doesn't know it.

Still, the red's fading out of his eyes. That's good. Means he's less likely to channel the Wrathful one and try to bury a club in your skull.

"Seersis said t'call you up and see if you could find th'hell's up with my thinkpan." He croaks after a moment, and you raise an eyebrow at him, watching carefully out of the corner of your eye.

There are a few Seers around, but the only one that you can think might actually have the temerity to meddle would be Pyrope's younger dancestor.

From what you'd heard, though, you didn't think she gave a damn about Gamzee; sure as hell not enough to direct him to you.

_'Why?'_

Gamzee growled lowly, irritation bleeding red into his eyes as he turns to glare at you.

You don't move a muscle; just stare straight back into his eyes, completely calm and completely unthreatened.

It isn't until he turns his gaze away, a slight hint of purple in his cheeks that you allow your incredulity any room on your face.

What the  _fuck?!_

This officially isn't anything  _but_ psychic overload, which mean's you're gonna  _have_ to take a leap you'd been avoiding for a while. Still, needs must and all that shit; after all, you'd taken an oath, same as every purpleblood on Beforus, and unlike  _some_ deities you could name, you take your oaths fucking seriously.

With a resigned sigh, you reach up to your lips and slide one murderously sharp clawtip under the first stitch.

All it takes is a twitch of your finger and the thread holding your lips (mostly) shut, snaps.

  
  


==> Karkat; be stunned

When Kurloz approaches you, Gamzee meekly in tow and in his troll form again, you (internally) freak out.

You'd been avoiding the purple Beforan as much as you could; partly out of old, long held terror of older purplebloods, (subjugglators are merciless in their culling,) and partly just because he looks so much like how Gamzee should that it makes you  _furious_ to see him perfectly capable of walking around and functioning while Gamzee is still pan-fucked to hell for some reason.

And yeah, you'd been trying to get someone to go take a look at his fucking head, but for some reason no one  _would._ All they'd say was that they were busy, or they'd look later, or what-the-fuck-ever, and no one  _ever_ gets around to looking.

It makes you want to scream, and you're  _this_ fucking close to trying to  _force_ your fucking Blood powers to be useful for once and help you figure this out.

Although... thinking of blood...

Your head comes up sharply as you realize what the faint, metallic scent you'd been trying to place was, and you're looking over the trolls in front of you, scanning them for injury before you even realize what you're doing.

Kurloz is radiating amusement when you spot the twin rows of little puncture scars, a couple with little beads of dark purple blood welling out of them, and a smudged purple trail away from one of them cutting through the white paint on his chin; when you swear, you  _feel_ his amusement intensify.

"Oh for-" Reaching into your sylladex only produces a spare shirt, but you throw it at him anyway. "Put that on those! Grubfucking empress; you're as hopeless as your fucking dancestor! What the hell were you thinking? 'Let's just walk up to Karkat, bleeding out of my fucking facial holes, and scare the excrement out of him! That'd be great!' Was that it? Fucking  _idiots_ , the both of you! What the fuck were you even  _doing_ ?"

"Gotta have words with a brother's 'rail b'fore taking him off."

The words are almost too quiet to hear, whispered as they were and muffled by your shirt, but you stare at Kurloz anyway, because you  _don't know that voice_ and that means that it had to have been him speaking, which means that that blood wasn't because the stitches got yanked on or pulled weird and tore the skin; it was because the stitches are  _gone._

The "I'm not his moirail." is automatic, and then you're pulling your shirt away from Kurloz's mouth to stare at the holes where the stitches used to be.

They're neat, not ragged or torn through the lips, so he had to have taken them out on purpose, which only leaves you with one question.

"Why?" You demand, looking between the two similar trolls.

"Had to." Kurloz whispers, his voice low and thin and rasping with disuse. "Took an oath. Gotta make sure a brother's got his pan on straight."

You scowl.

This guy? This is the guy who's going to fix Gamzee? Seriously?!

"Oh yeah?" you demand, crossing your arms and glaring at the taller troll, "and how're you going to do that? Do you even know what's wrong with him?"

Kurloz nods, but doesn't make a move to explain himself, and your scowl deepens.

"Well??" you demand, and he lifts one eyebrow.

"Can't." he rasps, his fingers twitching in signs, "Confidential. You're not his moirail; can't tell you."

That hits like he'd actually  _hit_ you, and you actually lean backwards a little, your eyes wide as you look between the two purplebloods.

"You  _what?!_ "

"Can't tell you shit." Kurloz repeats, and the raspiness of his voice is even more pronounced now, "moirails are told as courtesy. Y'not his moirail, I can't say shit until he's better."

Now you're speechless, looking from Gamzee to Kurloz, then back again, hoping that Gamzee will say something that'll make Kurloz tell you  _what the fuck is going on_ , but he stays silent, doesn't even look at you, and, after a moment, you turn away.

"Fine. Thanks for telling me or whatever the fuck. Go do whatever the fuck you're going to do, then."

The fact that they do is like salt to an open wound.

  
  


==> Kurloz; fix Gamzee

You will, in fact, be 'doing whatever', because psychic overload isn't actually something that can be fixed as easily as it can be caused, especially in purples, and as you're leading your dancestor deeper and deeper into the hive; trying to get as far away from everyone else as possible, you're running through what you can remember of the part of your training dealing with it.

Basically, it's caused by a bunch of different shit, all built up until the mind can't handle it anymore. Mind control, uncontrolled chucklevoodoos, hell, even just hanging out too much with other psionics without knowing how to shield can create the negative feedback loop that ends up with the troll in a psychotically over-defensive state. Usually it's purples that have the problem most. Sometimes a cerulean, or a yellow or bronze'll get dragged in to a clinic for it, and the treatment's always the same- isolation from other psychic signatures, and low dosage sopor treatments to dull the overly sensitive sixth sense until the troll can build up shields good enough to protect themselves.

The problem is, from what he's told you, Gamzee used to  _eat_ sopor, which means the backlash was real, and bad, and he  _says_ he doesn't remember it.

People probably died, you note dispassionately, and make a mental note to keep the sopor doses low, if you can even find some.

Maybe that human sis what made the matriorb'll be able to poof some up? It's a possibility that you'll have to remember, and try to talk to her the first chance you get.

You're so absorbed in your thoughts, making plans and scouring your pan for everything you can remember about treating psychic overload and backlash that you don't notice Gamzee trying to get your attention until a hand grabs your shoulder.

Your 'voodoos rise without you even thinking about it as you turn, and you force them back down, shoving and pressing and rolling your power down as far as you can get.

Shit, you're so fucking out of practice at this. You haven't pulled a shift for fucking  _centuries,_ how're you supposed to fall back into those fucking habits quick enough to be of any fucking use?

"... the fuck we going?" Gamzee asks, glancing around the darkened hallway, and you gesture for him to follow you a little further.

"My block."

It's not ideal, but your block is isolated, more due to the others' wariness of you than by choice, but now it's going to come in handy, and the isolation hadn't really bothered you before, even after Meulin had fucked off somewhere else.

Gamzee stiffens, but follows you, and when you kick open your door he follows you inside easily enough, glancing around warily like he's expecting... something.

"Sit." you rasp, nodding toward a couch you'd taken from one of the other, unused blocks. Your throat hurts like a bitch, and you  _really_ don't want to be talking, but, well, you really don't have a choice. Gamzee has to know what's going on, and he needs to know that it  _is_ treatable.

You're just also going to have to do your best to make sure he knows that you aren't going to be able to talk this much once you're done explaining. After all, now that you've finally taken the stitches out, it'd suck for your fucking vocal chords to tear or snap or whatever because of overuse.

  
  


==>Gamzee; Understand

You're having a hard time understanding what exactly Kurloz's trying to tell you; he's got it all wrapped up in fancy ass thirty caegar words and shit that sounds more technical that it's got any right t'be, but you think that maybe you've got the gist of it.

Your thinkpan is fucked up 'cause you been mind fucked by the spider bitches, and Caliborn.

When he starts talking about building back up your mental shields, though, you frown.

"My what?"

Kurloz stares at you.

"Shields." he rasps, and you're starting to get a little concerned about the brother's voice; it's got a weird, bubbly undertone now, but he ain't getting his concern on about it, so you can't be in his business about it. For all Karbro says he ain't your moirail now, you sure as hell're still pale as pale could be for him, and you ain't going to be any kind of infidelitous.

"What the motherfuck are shields?"

It's irritating how much you don't fucking know, either from Goatdad not bein' around to make you do your schoolfeeding, or because your pan was too rotted with sopor to remember shit, and it's even worse the fact that a lot of the time you can't tell which reason is why.

Oh. Hey, that's kinda cool. Kurbro is almost as white as his paint now. How'd he manage that?

  
  


It takes Kurloz twenty minutes to explain to you what shields are, and how they work, and why, exactly, they're so important, and by the end of the half whispered, half croaked lecture, you're almost positive that nothing like what he was talking about was in any of your schoolfeeding.

When you tell him that, he looks like he wants to up and cull somebody, and for a half second you're sure it's gonna be you, but all he does is take a deep breath and blow it out slowly, massaging absently at his throat.

"Right." he croaks. "Sure. Motherfucking schoolfeeding missing a whole messiahs damned part of the training. It's a bitchtits fucking _miracle_."

The last word is half snarled, half coughed, and you're a little surprised by the sheer amount of venom your dancestor can fit into a whisper.

"So what'm I supposed to do?" You ask, suddenly worried that not knowing shields is going to keep you from getting your pan all together.

"Fix your pan first." Kurloz rasps, "then I'm gonna fucking train the shit outta you, the way a purple ought t'be trained."

Oddly enough, that isn't the most reassuring thing you'd ever heard.

==> Aradia; Skip some time

Ever since you got here, things have just been so busy! It's been fun, and exciting, and, well, sort of sad, too, you guess, what with all the dead Daves that one time, but hey! At least Alpha Dave didn't die! And no one who didn't come back died either! And you got to have a corpse party with Jake up on the mountain!

That was actually pretty cool, and you got to talk to one of the alpha humans for a while, and it turns out that Jake is actually a pretty neat guy! He likes exploring, and adventure, and he's not _as_ interested in digging things up as you are, but he sure likes to talk about wrestling animals, so it's okay! The two of you can go on adventures to far off places, and you'll dig up the stuff left by dead people, and he can wrestle whatever animals might be around and want to eat you!

Which, actually, is sort of what you're doing now! Only instead of it being in a far off place, it's just the frog temple, but it's still kind of cool, because a lot of the markings and writing in  _this_ frog temple are waaaay different than the markings and writing in the frog temple you found while you were dead, so now you're trying to compare the two!

It's hard, because you're having to try to remember everything you'd seen in your frog temple, because you didn't actually have corporeal hands to use a camera to take pictures for references or anything. (You could have used your telekenesis, but you didn't exactly have a camera. Or money. Or even really care about how cool it was. Looking back at it, being dead was kinda  _really_ boring.)

"I say!" Jake's startled exclamation is enough to pull you out of your contemplation of a particularly  _loopy_ bit of wall carving that you  _think_ might be the same as one of yours. There's a little spike off one side, and you can't tell whether it's a crack, or an actual part of the carving, and you're thinking that you might actually have to get Jake to Hope this whole section of wall back into being complete before you'll figure it out.

"What's up?" You ask, heading towards where he's hanging out near the ceiling with a neat flick of your wings.

"Look," he says, not taking his eyes off a section of the ceiling that looks virtually identical to every other part of the ceiling. "just there, where there's that smidgen of lichen."

"There's lichen  _everywhere_ !" You protest, but flit a little bit closer, squinting at the ceiling.

"Not there," he says abruptly, then, "curse it, woman, your head's in the way!"

Grinning to yourself, you move sideways out of the way and allow Jake to move the little glowing orb of light into position and stick it to the ceiling. When he let go, it stayed there, quivering slightly.

"What-?" You ask, looking between Jake and the little light ball.

Jake shrugs. "Don't ask me. I've got no clue at all; I only wanted the blasted thing! Now," and he gestures impatiently back toward the ceiling, and you obediently turn your attention back towards whatever he's trying to show you.

It takes some squinting and a repositioning of the light, but eventually you're able to pick out the faint outline of swirling, stylized wings carved on the stone.

"Oh wow!"

Jake isn't as pleased as you are.

"So it's not just my eyes playing tricks on me?" He asks, and frowns when you shake your head.

"Nope! Your eyes are perfectly fine!" You pause, then grin at him, "As much as having to wear glasses is fine, at least!"

Jake ignores that part, frowning disgruntledly at the faint, barely there outlines. "I thought that with the game over we wouldn't be bothered by such ridiculous time shenanigans anymore..."

You raise one of your eyebrows at him, but he's too busy scowling at the ceiling to notice.

"I don't actually think it's timeliney," You offer, "How'd you find it?"

Jake shrugged. "I was... getting a bit bored, actually, and thought I'd try my hand at a bit of flight. I bally near cracked my skull on the ceiling, and when I looked up, there it was."

You frown slightly, tilting your head back to look at the carving. That, honestly, sounds a li-ttle too much like narrative causality for your liking. After all, Sgrub (and Sburb) were practically flushbonded to narrative causality; if something was a convenient way to move the players toward the goal, then it'd happen.

"Did you touch it?" You ask, and Jake gives you a flat look.

"We are in a temple." He says distinctly, "An ancient temple, long abandoned, and falling into ruin."

You wait, watching him expectantly.

"Of course I touched it!" He exclaims, "It's probably a trigger for a secret door that leads to fabulous treasures!"

"Or a trap." You point out reasonably, and Jake nods.

"Or a trap." He agrees, "But I touched it nearly ten minutes ago. I only called you over when nothing happened. I was rather hoping you'd be able to see if there was a broken mechanism of some sort, and maybe fix it with your timey thing."

You frown. "But we don't know what it might do."

"That's right."

"It could kill us."

"We'd just come back."

"It could collapse the temple."

"A flight through falling debris would be very fitting, and dramatic. Quite a lot of fun, too."

"Jade might get mad at us for breaking the temple."

"You and Dave would likely be able to put it back together."

You frown at Jake for a moment longer, then, slowly, let a grin creep across your face.

"I like the way you think!" You exclaim, and nudge the human out of the way so you can get a closer look at the carving.

There's nothing obvious when you look at it. For all intents and purposes it's just a carving. Even calling up your powers as the Maid of Time and rewinding it did nothing except make the lines sharper and get rid of some of the worst cracking.

Poking and prodding it did nothing; trying to pry the wings out of the ceiling did worse than nothing (you've ripped claws before, but it still hurts), and even when Jake resorted to giving it an awkward looking upside down kick, nothing happened.

"I thought it might be stuck." Jake muttered over your giggles, his cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment.

In all honesty, the way his cape had wrapped itself around his head _had_ been funny, but it'd been made even better by the way it had _finally_ revealed the butt that it usually (just barely) concealed.

Hey, a girl might be possibly-sort-of-in-a-way involved with a potential matesprit/moirail, but until all that confusion cleared up she was perfectly free to  _look_ !

Besides. It was a really, really nice butt.

"I don't get it," Jake says, changing the subject as you get your giggles back under control. "this  _should_ lead to a secret room, or a trap, or  _something_ . It's impossible that it's just here for decoration when none of the other rooms have ceiling adornments!"

Scowling, he runs his fingers along the carved lines. "Maybe there's a hidden switch?" he mutters, "A button? Some sort of hidden toggle? There  _has_ to be something."

Abruptly, there is something.

A sharp little click that echoes impossibly in the chamber as the carved lines fill with golden light.

"Oh."

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry it took so long for this. I've been living in a car for the last... three months or so, so if you wanna help me out hit up my tumblr, KalicoFox.tumblr.com  
> Also, this story is, at some point soon going to go through an overhaul, integrating the ____: Dream chapters from Intervals into Aftermath proper.  
> This chapter is all thanks to Cobaltkestral, from tumblr. Hope you enjoy!


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